Renty strukturalne jako instrument modernizacji polskiego rolnictwa – próba oceny

The article offers a spatial analysis of structural pensions, one of the measures of the Rural Development Programme (RDP) intended to improve the agrarian and demographic structure of agriculture. The analysis rests on the list of 65.5 thous. structural pensions as of mid-2010, made public by the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (AR&MA). They were subjected to the procedure of aggregation into commune-based units (number of pensions, their average amount, and share in the total number of agricultural holdings), and compared against spatial differences in the average area of an individually held farm. The analysis closes with an assessment of how structural pensions affected the size structure of farms in the years 2002–2010 (a regional approach relying on agricultural censuses) and with conclusions that can be drawn on this basis as to the effect of this EU Common Agricultural Policy instrument on the agrarian structure of Polish farming.