The current state of agricultural production space is the outcome of centuries of human activity, as conditioned by socio-economic, legal, and political factors. The characteristic features of the spatial layout of land, which has been shaped in this historical process in the rural areas of southern and south-eastern Poland, are farms divided into a large number of parcels, lack of access to parcels, irregular shapes of parcels, and their scattering in space.

Agricultural transport roads play an important role not only from the point of view of individual farm holdings, but also the general development of rural areas. Roads constitute an element of the technical infrastructure indispensable for communication and transport; they play a role in shaping the rural landscape, and the routes they follow affect the forms and size of agricultural land and forest areas found within the area covered by a given road system. The existing public road network does not always provide access to all fields.

Frequently, agriculture intensification by means of high-input technologies and agroecosystem simplification led to unsustainable farming systems. Increasing spatial-temporal diversity in agroecosystems has been shown as a promising alternative for restoring degraded land. A methodological approach is discussed here, based on preliminary results of experiences in a region of strong biophysical gradients. The CENTURY model is validated under local conditions and used as monitoring tool.