Economic and social importance of agricultural productive cooperatives in Poland Ekonomiczne i spo eczne znaczenie rolniczych spó dzielni produkcyjnych w Polsce

In the introduction, the article presents a brief reflection on collaborative farming in Poland and abroad. There is also a formulated objective of the study, which is to show the essence of agricultural productive cooperatives’ activity and their role in the farmers’ and local communities’ protection. The following section presents used research methods and the subjective, spatial and temporal scope of own research. Subsequent parts of the article relate to the description of the history of APCs in Poland with an explanation of the causes of their foundation and liquidating, presentation the essence and the role of cooperative activi-ties in agriculture with an indication of the advantages of collective farming and characteris-tics of agricultural, economic and social activities of Polish APCs. At the end of the article there is the summary of the undertaken considerations and conclu-sions.