Evaluation of the Symmetry of Statistical Methods Applied for the Identification of Agricultural Areas

Abstract

The main priorities of the common agricultural policies of the European Union (EU) are improvement of the quality of life in rural areas for their inhabitants as well as the optimum utilisation of rural resources. The most efficient tools to improve the management conditions and utilise the potential of land are land consolidation works aimed at creating more favourable management conditions in agriculture and forestry through improving the territorial structure of farms, forests and forestland; the reasonable configuration of land, aligning the limits of real properties with the system of irrigation; and drainage facilities, roads and terrain. The development of agriculture in Poland and its production capacity are considerably differentiated in terms of space. At present, Poland has agricultural areas which, in many respects, have a chance of competing with agriculture in the other member states of the European Union. However, in some areas, agricultural production run by private farms owned by individuals is on the verge of falling below the limit of profitability or falls below the limit of profitability. Currently, Poland lacks tools (strategies) allowing identification of land for intensive agricultural production as well as information about agricultural land that should be developed for non-agricultural purposes. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a methodology for identifying similar areas using available tools that can facilitate reliable identification of the areas relating to the indicated factors. Taxonomic methods can be used for clustering purposes. The study materials are data derived from real property register databases referring to one of the districts (poviats) situated in east-central Poland. As a final result, a method of clustering villages according to similar land-use categories was developed. It was created using two independent statistical methods: Ward’s method and the complete-linkage method. The highest consistency was observed in two groups of identified types of areas sharing very similar characteristics. A high index of similarity of both methods—the so-called Rand index—testified to the reliability of the results of calculations. The results of clustering corresponded to a large extent to actual features defining the use of land in the analysed villages as well as the terrain relief.