Bulgaria began the transformation of its agricultural sector early in the reform process. The chosen path of land reform was radical and aimed at restoring the status quo enjoyed half a century ago. The outcome of this slow and complicated process was a very fragmented structure of land ownership and farming structure dominated by a large number of small private family farms. Reforming land ownership rights to the status of fifty years ago created a dualistic farming structure of individual and commercial farms. Within the category of individual farms, there are a large number of small subsistence farms, most of which belong to elderly people. At the beginning of reform, they were considered as concomitant structures, stemming from pre-reform household plots with limited influence on the formation of the sector. However, with the prolonged land reform, missing land markets and difficult processes of creating the infrastructure of a market economy, it was realised that subsistence farming in Bulgaria was not a temporary phenomenon.