The article is devoted to the spatial structure of livestock breeding in State Farms in Poland in 1971 by poviats (administrative units) in the state in June. In sequence the fodder problems, cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry breeding, livestock breeding in total and livestock breeding orientations are presented. Cattle amount to 86,1 % of all livestock in State Farms in 1971, growing systematically since post-war years. The huge superiority of cattle in Polish State Farms results from a meat orientation. Pig breeding in Poland was treated as a traditional farmers’ branch of breeding. It was a result of low prices for pork production in State Farms in 60 years (e.g.bad conditions of pigsties, defficulties on the fodder market). For that reason pig production in State Farms in 1971 amounted to only 11 % of all livestock. Sheep breeding in State Farms plays a minimal role, because sheep amount to merely 2,7% of all livestock in State Farms in 1971 and about 15% of all sheep in Poland. Only just in the last few years has sheep breeding become specialized in newly created farms. Up to now too low purchase prices of wool and sheep meat and the absence of a suitable sheepfold has stopped the development of sheep breeding. Poultry breeding in State Farms plays a marginal role in contradistinction to co-operative farms. The application of the method of succesive quotiens (in the version 6/6), well known in Polish geographical literature, allows the determination of 8 livestock breeding orientations. The most frequent is exclusively cattle breeding orientation. It appears in 190 poviats (out of 310 poviats studied). A little less frequent is strongly cattle breeding orientation with a small share of pigs, represented by 82 poviats. Both of these orientations amount to 91.5% of all poviats, in which State Farms were located. 10 poviats represent predominantly cattle breeding orientation with a share of pigs, the most popular livestock breeding orientation in private farming in Poland. The cattle-pigs breeding orientation appears only in 1 poviat and the exclusively pigs breeding orientation in 2 poviats in Białystok voivodship. Only in the city of Warsaw was represented predominantly cattle breeding orientation with a small share of pigs and poultry. The rest of orientations is also sporadic: the strongly cattle breeding orientation with a small share of sheep is represented only by 2 poviats Bieszczady mountains) and exclusively poultry breeding orientation also by 2 poviats. In comparison to private farming, State Farms have somewhat more of a livestock beeding orientations and the location of them is different. The delimitation of the livestock breeding orientations confirms a predominance of cattle in livestock breeding in Polish State Farms. Also one discovers some more rare orientations, although these are specific to State Farms, which don’t happen in private farming in Poland.
The changes that take place in the structure of agricultural population according to the maintenance sources, lie in the fact that people leave work in agriculture for non-agricultural professions. The result of this process is a decrease of the percentage of agricultural population. This is a process of economic urbanization, whose speed is different in individual regions and historic periods as it depends on the following: birth-rate of the professionaly active population in towns and in the country, proportion between the development rate of industry and agriculture, labour demand of the production techniques in agriculture, the character of technology progress in industry, and many other factors like e.g. the obtained level of economy. The process of the economic urbanization of the country has been slower in the Suwałki Province so far than in whole Poland. This was caused by the dominant role of agriculture, however, not very well provided with means of production and low level of urbanization and industrialization. According the forecast of the agricultural population in the communes of the province, made by means of Markov chains model, the percentage of this population will decrease from 74.5% in 1975 to 67.4% in 1980 and to 63.7% in 1990 which should be considered to be moderate speed. The average decrease of the percentage of the agricultural population in the years 1980-1990 will be 4.1%, at the same time in the typically agricultural communes, like those situated in the north - east part of the province, it will be lower even than 0.8%, whereas in the communes with well developed recreative function and forest e.g. in the western part of the province, it will be higher even than 8.2%.