A FARMING business with tens of thousands of acres of land in the north has raked in £9million of subsidies in just three years.
Deeside-based Frank A Smart and Son Ltd has topped the payments league table for the third year in a row.
The company was given £3,287,587 for 2013 – a £57,000 increase on what it collected the previous year, but a whopping £3.1million rise on the £138,000 it was awarded when the single farm payments (SFP) regime started in 2005. The Press and Journal can reveal the scale of the subsidy as the battle to stop all payments to so-called “slipper farmers” intensifies, both in Scotland and in Europe.
They have used European rules to buy up subsidy entitlements and then rent land across the country – so-called naked acres – to trigger payments on them, without producing crops or keeping livestock. The only condition they have to meet is that the land they use is kept in good agricultural and environmental condition.
The Scottish Government confirmed the payment – and the land used by the business in 2012 to trigger its then-£3,230,278.09 award – in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the Press and Journal.
The business used 52 “fields”, covering nearly 85,000 acres, from Kincardine O’Neill in Aberdeenshire to Harris in the Western Isles.
Frank A Smart and Son is believed to farm about 400 acres from its base near Torphins.
Sole director and shareholder Frank Smart, 52, was unavailable to comment yesterday.
He has repeatedly declined to discuss the scale of his firm’s subsidy payments, other than to say he is “not embarrassed” by it.
The figures for the top 50 recipients of SFP up to February 5 show little change from last year, although the National Trust for Scotland moves up one place to 19th with a £350,141.02 payout.
The European Commission has vowed to bring an end the scandal of payments for “slipper farming” in its new Common Agricultural Policy.
Comment, Page 32
Farming supplement, Pages 2&3
