Largest farm payments made to richest landowners

Largest farm payments made to richest landowners

Some of East Anglia's richest landowners took the lion's share of millions of pounds in subsidies while smaller farmers struggled on a fraction of the biggest payments, figures reveal.

It is the second year that the details of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy payouts to farmers have been made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

The total paid out by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) to almost 120,000 claimants during 2004-05 was more than £1.8bn and the country's largest individual recipient was FarmCare, the farming business of the Co-op, which was paid more than £2.35m. And the largest individual recipient in Norfolk was Italian landowner Count Padulli's Albanwise arable enterprise with a total payment of £1.15m.

Richest landowners get the lion's share (EDP24 Business, 1 September 2006)