After the change of the political system and the transformation of the economy, which
depended on abandoning the planned economy, in Poland emerged features that shown
agriculture and rural areas maladjustment to the new state model and a market economy that
was being implemented. By the end of the 1980s, the main features of agriculture and rural
areas were resulting from development model realised over the years, whose main objective
was the agricultural production. The new reality disclosed low economic efficiency of many
farms and the necessity to reorient the concept of developing regions with monofunctional
agricultural character to the concept of differentiating their economies. A key problem
connected with ensuring rural population improvement of the standard of living is developing
non-agricultural functions in rural areas. The generally unprofitable agricultural production
must be supplemented, or even replaced by other non-agricultural functions, e.g. tourism,
handicrafts or agri-food processing. The article presents the issue of multifunctional
development of rural areas and agriculture in Poland. One of the elements of this development
is tourism in rural areas, and the related agritourism, which is treated as an important branch of
the non-agricultural activities, not only on a local, but also on a national scale. The paper
shows the most important economic and non-economic benefits associated with the
development of agritourism, as well as the threats arising from it for the rural area
