The Influence of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy on the Socio-Economic Sustainability of Farms (the Case of Poland)

Katarzyna Smędzik-Ambroży, Marta Guth, Sebastian Stępień and Agnieszka Brelik
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Katarzyna Smędzik-Ambroży: Department of Macroeconomics and Agricultural Economics, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Al. Niepodległości 10, 61-875 Poznań, Poland
Marta Guth: Department of Macroeconomics and Agricultural Economics, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Al. Niepodległości 10, 61-875 Poznań, Poland
Sebastian Stępień: Department of Macroeconomics and Agricultural Economics, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Al. Niepodległości 10, 61-875 Poznań, Poland
Agnieszka Brelik: Department of European and Regional Studies, West Pomeranian University of Technology Szczecin ul. Żołnierska 47, 72-210 Szczecin, Poland

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 24, 1-15

Abstract: Sustainable development plays an important role in shaping conditions for economic growth, social development and care for the natural environment. The issue was also noticed at the level of the European Union, which is expressed among others by creating sectoral policies, including the Common Agricultural Policy. The aim of the article is to determine the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy on the level of socio-economic sustainability of farms in Poland. The authors formulate a hypothesis that the existing solutions serve the achievement of economic sustainability, determined by the agricultural to non-agricultural income ratio, but they do not provide sustainability of farms in terms of the social element understood as taking income disparities into consideration. In the article, panel regression and the ratio of income from representative FADN farms to average annual gross salary per employee in Poland in the years 2004–2017 were used. It was found that thanks to the support from the Common Agricultural Policy, the average income of farms comes close to the average income of the non-agricultural sector. However, the influence of the subsidies on changes in economic sustainability was uneven in various economic size classes of farms—the strongest farms benefited the most, which means that social sustainability in terms of equal distribution of income was not achieved.

Keywords: socio-economic sustainability; agriculture; public policies; Common Agricultural Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:24:p:7173-:d:298071

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