Farmers’ willingness to supply biomass for energy generation: evidence from South and Central Poland

ABSTRACT

The objective of this survey-based study was to investigate farmers’ willingness to supply biomass for power generation in the south and in the centre of Poland. In total, 210 farmers participated in this study by filling in a self-instructed questionnaire. The results indicate that the majority of farmers (two-thirds) in both regions appeared unwilling to collect, store and transport biomass to the market or to the energy production facility. It is likely that an unstable biomass market marked by low demand and low prices has led to unwillingness by farmers to engage in bioenergy production in Poland. Increasing the role of biomass as a renewable energy resource and recovering the farmers’ confidence in the market would require fixing the shortcomings in the biomass market and the provision of clear public policies that aim at long-term market stability.

KEYWORDS:

• Farmers
• Poland
• supply chain
• Torun region
• Upper Silesia
• willingness to supply

Acknowledgments

The work was carried out in the Sustainable Bioenergy Solutions for Tomorrow (BEST) research program coordinated by CLIC Innovation with funding from the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, Tekes (www.clicinnovation.fi). The authors would like to sincerely thank Elena Fedorova and Eva Pongracz from Oulu University, and Petri Latva-Käyrä from Arbonaut, for commenting on and improving earlier versions of the questionnaire.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.