PUBLIC GOODS AND INTRINSIC LAND PRODUCTIVITY - DELIBERATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PARADIGM OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Abstract

The paper reviews the concept of public goods, indicating its various dimensions. The fundamental objective of the paper is conceptualizing public goods and answering a question whether a public goods delivered by agricultural land is valorized in land prices. The aim of the study was also to identify the mechanism that makes intrinsic land utility transformed into productivity in monetary units. A conducted research consists in deriving a land rent capitalized in land prices and estimating its share in land value in comparison with the share of lease fees in the different regions of Poland in years 2000-2009. In the authors opinion since accession of Poland to the UE a market has valorized intrinsic utilities of land, whereas the new role of capital and labour is distribution of those utilities in favour of consumers. Given the fact that there is a lack of Polish scientific studies on agricultural areas as a provider of public goods findings of foreign scientists were also used in the research. Since the beginning of human civilization, the land has been creating certain utilities which satisfy human needs. When the dangerous side effects of industrial agriculture have occurred intrinsic land utilities are being discovered anew. They have a nature of public goods and constitute a hard core of the sustainable agriculture paradigm. Despite irreversible accumulation of capital in the anthropogenic environment many new utilities of the land come into existence without additional capital and labour inputs. Since they are public goods, they are paid from taxes in great measure. This way an intrinsic land utility takes a form of a paid product and can be called "intrinsic productivity" of land.