DOES SIZE STRUCTURE OF AGRICULTURAL FARMS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC INFLUENCE DISTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURAL ANAEROBIC DIGESTION PLANTS?

Anaerobic digestion (AD) plants form important part of the countryside of the Czech Republic, where nowadays more than 500 of these facilities for generation of renewable energy could be found (circa two thirds of them are based on agriculture). These agricultural AD plants were planned to be fed by agricultural waste, however, due to the recent agricultural changes in the Czech agriculture and market attractiveness of purpose grown plants, maize become major input material to be transformed into energy in AD plants. It is obvious that the sowing areas in the Czech Republic has been significantly changed after the AD plants started their huge booming after the EU accession. In this paper, mutual contexts of size structures of agricultural farms, natural conditions and spatial distribution of agricultural AD plants in the Czech Republic are surveyed (for period 2002-2010). It was found that the agricultural AD plants are more concentrated in areas with larger agricultural farms in average natural conditions for farming. This is caused by both the European and national supporting policies that were focused more on support of large farms and supported more alternative income of larger farms than on following of environmental benefits of operation of AD plants (like processing of agricultural waste).