Implementing Pillar II of the Common Agricultural Policy in England: Geographies of the Rural Enterprise Scheme and Processing and Marketing Grant

This paper examines the geography of two policy instruments – the Rural Enterprise Scheme (RES) and the Processing and Marketing Grant (PMG) – that formed part of the second ‘pillar’ of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in England between 2000 and 2006. It starts by outlining the ongoing debate over the role of geography in policy research, an outcome of which has been a call for more empirical work that explores the ‘difference that place makes’ in the implementation of public funding mechanisms. The paper argues that the CAP is ripe for geographical analysis, as the Agenda 2000 reforms can be interpreted as moving it away from a ‘sectoral’ (agricultural) approach to a more ‘territorial’ (rural development) one. After outlining the place of the RES and PMG in the reformed CAP in England, the paper discusses three factors – farm size, proportion of land rented and location – that may have influenced their geographies. The distribution of grant approvals under these schemes is then mapped using location quotients. Following this, the potential influence of the factors outlined above is tested using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic. The conclusion revisits the opening discussion by reflecting on the difference that place has made to the implementation of the PMG and RES.