Uwarunkowania zmian cen wieprzowiny i dochodów producentów trzody chlewnej w Polsce

The paper presents market-based mechanisms underlying changes in pig prices and pig meat producers’ income in Poland. The pig prices are determined by supply and demand equilibrium. Farmers are price takers and a market price is a parameter which enables them to make economic calculation and being verify their individual effectiveness. This paper comprises also an empirical analysis of the factors affecting pig prices de-velopment in the 1997-2012. The analysis based on VAR models indicates that pig prices in Poland are determined mostly by the situation on foreign markets. In the long term only around 30% pig prices variation in Poland depends on national conditions. The Granger causality tests proved that changes in the prices of pork in the marketing chain occur ac¬cording to a pattern typical for a competitive market – the direction of price signals comes from producer prices towards consumer prices. The farmers margins in pork meat marketing chain have not changed over analyzed period – they varied in cyclical and seasonal motion around 37% level. The collapse of pork production in Poland since 2008 has been caused mainly by struc-tural reasons. Pig production in Poland is very fragmented in comparison to other UE coun¬tries thus small economic of scale is reflected in farmers’ low incomes. High cost of pro¬duction per unit leads to deteriorating the price relationships between foreign and domestic prices and thus lowers demand for domestic pork.