Overgrowing of agricultural land is becoming the serious problem not only in Slovenia but also elsewhere in Europe although the reasons for overgrowing is not everywhere the same. Most frequent reasons stated for expansion of overgrowing areas in Slovenia are inconvenient natural conditions, socio-economic and political circumstances. Thus the efforts against overgrowing and understanding the background of the process are for particular importance.
In the study the relations between overgrowing areas and production system on mountain farms in Nord-east of Slovenia were estimated. For data analysis basic descriptive statistic was collected and carried out with the factor analysis. The data were processed with the program SPSS. The results obtained shows that the statistical significant correlations between overgrowing and some production system exist, although the results are rather unexpected. The highest correlations to overgrowing have the wood production, wood processing and field crops. All other production systems used in the study are not correlated to overgrowing with statistical significance. The scientific reasons of such research results are difficult to explain because of a rather small sample of farms and of poor expertises made on links and connections between overgrowing areas, natural conditions, production orientation and especially socio-economic conditions. This defect could be the topic for a more detailed research in the near future.

Key words: production system, mountain farms, overgrowing of agricultural land

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