The paper presents main appearances of economic activity of rural inhabitants. The analysis was made because of project of changes in the system of direct payments proposed by the European Parliament and European Commission relying on introduction of definition of active and virtual farmer. The research works covered all population of professional active farmers which position was analyzed on the background of all members of agricultural holdings. There were used data from materials of common agricultural censuses from 2002 and 2010. The research works focused on analyzes of chosen features of active farmers, like age and sex, education or period of farm management. The research showed that in rural areas there was the occurrence of large number of passive people who burden agricultural holdings. The managers of farms posses lower level of education comparing to total number of rural population