Climate Description: temperate with cold, cloudy, moderately severe winters with frequent precipitation; mild summers with frequent showers and thundershowers
Terrain Description: mostly flat plain; mountains along southern border
Arable Land Use: 35.49%
Permanent Crop Land Use: 1.25%
Irrigated Land: 1,157 sq km
Total Freshwater Withdrawal: 11.96 cu km/yr
Per Person Freshwater Withdrawal: 312.3 cu m/yr
Natural Hazards Description: Flooding
Environmental Current Issues: situation has improved since 1989 due to decline in heavy industry and increased environmental concern by post-Communist governments; air pollution nonetheless remains serious because of sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, and the resulting acid rain has caused forest damage; water pollution from industrial and municipal sources is also a problem, as is disposal of hazardous wastes; pollution levels should continue to decrease as industrial establishments bring their facilities up to EU code, but at substantial cost to business and the government
In Poland, there is state-owned and private owned land. Farmer-owned land is much more profitable than state-owned and therefore the state are trying to sell the state-owned land.
Polish organic agriculture develops at a very rapid pace, as between 2003 and 2012 the area of organic farming fields has increased elevenfold and only in 2012 the number of both organic farms and organic fields has increased 10% yoy.
Poland has remained one of the last strongholds of small farming in Europe, it is also a rare bastion of biodiversity, with 40,000 pairs of nesting storks and thousands of seed varieties that exist nowhere else in the world.
Farmers load tomatoes onto a truck during harvest in Gorne village, eastern Poland, 20 August 2013. According to reports, about 13 per cent of the population is employed in the agricultural sector.