Direct Payments and their Impact on Farm Income of Agricultural producers after Bulgarias accession to the EU

P. Pochaleev

Abstract: Bulgaria’s accession to the EU has opened up new prospects of the agricultural holdings in the country. While the new environment in which to operate these holdings - the Common Agricultural policy, placed in front of them number of challenges and problems of development. The main objective of this study is to trace the change of the incomes of farmers and the impact of the direct payments after the accession of Bulgaria to the EU. Initially makes a short overview of the approaches to resolving the farm problem and the approaches applied in support of agricultural holdings in developed and developing countries. Subject of a study are agricultural holdings in the
region of Plovdiv, the surveyed 65 farms with different legal and organizational status. As a result of the data obtained from the analysis we suggest a change in the way of support of agricultural holdings. The proposal, which may be made for the restructuring of the way of supporting of agricultural holdings in the framework of the EU, is the following: Reduce the financial means • to support the agriculture in the EU during the period 2014-2020 years up to 30% of the total budget; • Pre-fixing of the funds for the support of agricultural holdings on an annual basis; • Support the holdings of base their economic size, not a per unit area; • Phased reduction of direct payments to base their economic size and their abolition 2020 year; • Forwarding of the financial resources to priority for the EU activities.

Keywords: CAP; direct payments; farm problems; incomes

Date published: 2018-03-30