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The innovativeness of the green economy can be considered both in relation to total innovation and eco-innovation. The aim of the research is to assess the level of innovation of enterprises operating in the green economy sectors, with particular emphasis on eco-innovation. The research was carried out in 2017, using CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) technology, among 578 randomly selected enterprises of the SME sector directly related to the green economy, located in the Warminsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship. The analyzes were carried out in relation to data on innovativeness of enterprises collected by the Central Statistical Office and Eurostat data regarding the development of this sector in EU countries. The analyses show that the level of innovativeness of companies in the green economy sector in the Warminsko- Mazurskie Voivodship is low and process innovations are the ones that are most often introduced which are related to the search for resource-efficient production technologies and services (eco-innovation). Authors' research and literature review indicate that there are No universal recipes for increasing innovation and competitiveness of economies; however, the high level of innovation, including eco-innovativeness is characterized by the economies of countries that invest in research and development, human and social capital and mobilize various institutions around common purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an analysis of the farms manager by young farmers. The research was carried out in 2018 in the Warminsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship and included two groups, including 32 young farmers and 48 farmers aged 40 or over. Participants of the study were farmers who cooperate with the Warmian-Masurian Agricultural Advisory Center and run development farms, with a commodity character of production. The aim of the research was to find the answer to the question whether young farmers using preferences under the Common Agricultural Policy are more willing than other farmers to modernize the farms which they manage. In the group of young farmers covered by the survey, the average area of farms managed by them was 31.47 ha, while in the case of farmers over 40 years old an average area of their farms was 112.46 ha. Older farmers owned 3.5 times larger farms compared to representatives of the group of young farmers. Young farmers worked on their own, while the older farmers mostly employed hired workers. The modernization of farms was mainly financed by own capital, while all of them, without exception, used the available support for modernization of the farm. Due to the high costs of modernization of production, and above all the necessity to increase its scale by purchasing land, further development of farms run by young farmers will be slow, evolutionary, as was the case for farms run by farmers from the comparative group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws attention to the fact that the development of cooperative forms of administration in rural areas fosters job creation, integration of dispersed resources, and an increase in the activity of people with lower incomes. Despite the collapse of the cooperative movement, cooperatives begin to restore their potential; however, in addition to the few traditional cooperatives which have adapted to the market economy conditions, the so-called new cooperatives keep emerging. Particularly important areas of the activity of those cooperatives include: well-being services, renewable energy generation based on the use of substrates from agricultural sources, small-scale production, provision of services to the elderly, and support of tourism. The aim of the study was to indicate the possibilities for the development of rural cooperative movement based on opinions of the cooperative sector representatives. The study was carried out in 2015, using an interviewer questionnaire, on a purposely selected group of 88 managers representing a variety of forms and types of cooperatives operating in rural areas in the north-eastern Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]