Agricultural Holdings As Beneficiaries Of Area And Operational Payments From The European Union In Poland In The Period Of 2007-2013

The aim of the article was to assess the spatial diversity of payments of European Union assistance programmes implemented in the financial period of 2007-2013, which were directed to farms, as well as the assessment of the structure of these funds. It was shown that as much as PLN 121.2 billion – nearly 25.6% of the total – were distributed to the above-mentioned group of beneficiaries. The analysis was based on amounts of the obtained payments, including their division, as proposed by the authors, into area payments (dependent on the current subsidy rates per 1 ha of agricultural acreage) and operational payments (related to the implementation of specific aid measures within the CAP), with a breakdown into four absorption directions by the established groups of endogenous features of agriculture. A number of indicators and the cartogram method were used. The studies have demonstrated that the structure of these funds is dominated by area payments (77%), which are egalitarian, independent from the implementation of specific modernisation projects, applicable to all agricultural holdings and related to the agricultural acreage in good agricultural condition and the area of crops subject to the relevant payment. Besides the analysis of the spatial diversification of the above-mentioned payments by voivodships and counties, the research was guided towards the assessment of the relation between area and operational payments (Polish average 0.30), assuming that the share of the latter – given the impact of the EU funds – plays a decisive role in the modernisation of agriculture.