SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN THE CORE MARKETS FOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS IN POLAND AFTER THE ACCESSION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION

摘要

This paper attempts to determine the similaritybetween individual markets for agricultural products, consideringthe evolution of basic balance sheet data (production,domestic consumption, imports and exports) and real purchaseprices of agricultural products. The main markets foragricultural products include those demonstrating the highestproduction volumes of commodity such as cereals, potatoes,sugar beets (sugar), rape, fruit, vegetables, pork, beef andpoultry, cow’s milk and eggs in the study period. Based onthe search for data sources, and considering the specifics ofempirical data collected, it was decided that the followingmethods will be used to pursue the objectives of this study:principal component analysis, cluster analysis based on theWard’s method and k-means. The research allowed to identifythree groups of Polish markets which followed a similardevelopment trend after Poland’s accession to the EuropeanUnion. The first group consisted of markets for cereals, rape,poultry and fruits. The second cluster included markets forcow’s milk, eggs and beef. The last one was composed of potato,sugar beet, vegetable and pork markets.