More and more farmers no longer have creditworthiness. We want to survive!

The situation in Polish agriculture is dramatic. Purchase prices are still very low and sales do not cover costs, but the debt of Polish farms exceeds PLN 33 billion, which is an increase of 23%. over the last three years.

Instead of investment loans, farmers increasingly need working capital loans to improve their financial liquidity and cover current expenses, but more and more farms are struggling with a lack of creditworthiness. Many farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy, so they resort to self-harvesting. The West Pomeranian Chamber of Agriculture appealed to the Minister of Agriculture to immediately take action that would help stabilize the agricultural market.

Roadblocks by desperate farmers

Farmers associated with Agricultural Circles protest by blocking roads and explaining that a loan is not a solution for them. – We don’t want to get into debt, we want to work and earn honestly. We need state intervention, i.e. grain purchase, import control, support for local production – they said on the Topagrar.pl website.

In their opinion, the government should take decisive action, especially grain purchasei.e., stockpile supplies for three years so that they can be renewed every year. Farmers are convinced that such a move would certainly calm down the market situation. They warn that it’s cheap production from Ukraine and Mercosur countries floods Polish marketdisplacing domestic products.

– Without state aid, many family farms will not survive. Farmers won’t last much longer, he warns Andrzej Karbowy, president of the West Pomeranian Chamber of Agriculture.

– Goods coming to Poland from abroad do not meet Polish and EU standards. They use chemicals banned in Europe, and then these products return to our tables. That’s why we demand closing the borders for such products, because it exposes society to danger. We have banned 342 chemicals that cannot be used in the European Union, but German companies produce these chemicals in thousands of tons and send them to South America and Ukraine – this is sick! We have ports in Gdańsk and Świnoujście, so we can trade ourselves and not be held hostage by intermediaries – explained Edward Kosmal from “Solidarity” of Individual Farmers during the road blockade.

Protesters mthey will say straight: it is not fighting for subsidies or privileges, just for survival. – We put more into production than we can get back. Costs are eating away at us and profitability is decreasing year by year.

However, preferential loans are not for farmers

The West Pomeranian Chamber of Agriculture also appeals for clarification the issue of preferential loans. He points out that some farmers took out loans to pay off previous liabilities, which cannot always be documented with invoices. The requirement to present them is – as they write – “unfair and inadequate to the realities of work on a farm.”

From October 2025, farmers and agri-food processors can benefit from preferential working capital loans with a repayment guarantee and interest subsidies. under the Agricultural Guarantee Fund. Farmers and entrepreneurs will receive:

• free warranty up to 80 percent outstanding loan amount,
• interest subsidy for 24 months in the amount of 7%. – which, given the current WIBOR rate, means interest no higher than 1%. in the first two years,
• possibility of taking out a loan for a period of up to 4 years and a maximum amount of PLN 200,000. euro (approx. PLN 860,000).

According to the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, the current situation in Polish agriculture is the result of a combination of extremely unfavorable but objective economic factors, i.e. import of vegetables and fruit, insufficient expenditure on local processing, storage and support for the sale of agricultural production (including export), unfavorable market structure with the predominance of large retail chains, high fragmentation of farms and lack of quality control.