Abandonment or Regeneration and Re-Use? Factors Affecting the Usage of Farm Premises in Different Social Spaces of the Rural

Abstract

Nearly every village in Central and Eastern European countries with heavily collectivized agriculture has its collective farm premises that encompass substantial parts of the village area, were built in the sixties, and now are unable to be used in former ways. The aim of the paper is to identify indicators that are relevant for spatial disparities in the utilization of agricultural premises thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The location and its area of all pre-1989 rural farm premises within two NUTS 3 regions of the Czech Republic with its current uses were identified, and differences in present uses were tested against agri-natural and socio-economic characteristics (of the municipalities where rural farm premises are located) obtained from national databases. From a global point of view, socio-economic characteristics of municipalities were found to be exceedingly more important than agri-natural—thus, changing of uses is rather dependent on socio-economic context than on geographical preconditions of agriculture. Surprisingly, agricultural use or re-use can be primarily found in municipalities not suitable for intensive agriculture located in the fodder crops and potatoes areas of agricultural production with the highest shares of permanent grassland on agricultural land. On the other hand, areas with the best preconditions for agriculture tend to re-use former farm premises for non-agricultural production.