Impact of selected Common Agricultural Policy instruments on the strengthening and slowing of development processes in Polish agriculture

Abstract

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is historically the first among the common socio-economic policies of the EU that has undergone various changes. The contemporary CAP does not only aim at guaranteeing food security to consumers and fair income to farmers, but also to ensure: sustainable agricultural and rural development, increase in farm competitiveness, environmental and landscape protection. The aim of this paper is to analyse the changes that have taken place in Polish agriculture since the accession to the EU, and the impact of the CAP on those changes. The focus is mainly on the analysis of selected measures under the RPD. The work has been carried out as a statistical and descriptive analysis of the available empirical data using comparative methods. The data used comes from Statistics Poland, the ARMA, Eurostat, fieldwork done by the Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics, and the literature. The analysis shows that the implementation of the CAP in Polish agriculture has resulted in the quality of development, and farmers have used the opportunity relatively well. Despite certain unfavourable consequences, the overall balance of Polish agriculture as a EU Member is good. The necessity to adjust to the standards of the EU market was a barrier for a certain group of farmers, but this constraint and the inflow of funds has led to the faster modernisation of agriculture (improvement in the agrarian structure, increase in the ownership of agricultural machinery, increased economic power, technological modernisation, etc.) and the rise of a group of economically resilient farms. This phenomenon has in turn stimulated improvement in the productivity of production factors. Such a situation, the expansion of the market and direct payment has resulted in the increase of agricultural income. The impact of direct payments on the structural change has been ambiguous. On one hand, it has stimulated the concentration of land ownership, as the increase in the farm aream entails higher payments, and the economies of scale, while on the other hand, it prevented smallholders from making a decision.