Increase in the unit efficiency of plant and animal production depends mostly on the implementation of biological progress in farms. Plant and animal breeding companies of the Agricultural Property Agency play a particularly significant role in this process in the Polish agriculture. These companies have a considerable breeding and economic potential based on extended and modernised material and technical resources, as well as a stable, though not too high yet, profit. Despite a very low profitability of breeding activities, they still have a considerable potential to provide agriculture with high quality carriers of biological progress. However, the analysis shows that no progress has been made between 1990 and 2008 in terms of productivity of the basic crops, except for sugar beet. The progress in the livestock productivity is also insignificant. The distance between the Polish agriculture and the agriculture of the EU countries compared in the analysed period in terms of plant and animal productivity not only has not diminished, but has even slightly grown. It is mainly due to the fact that the number of farms with development potential in the Polish agriculture is very small (about 10% of total farms). Most of them already achieve high values of plant and animal productivity indicators, which are only slightly lower than the results generated in the compared EU Member States. Nevertheless, a vast majority of farms in our country (90%) are farms without development potential whose main objective is to survive.