At least for my country, NYT is correct that a large portion of the subsidies goes to few companies but that's not the whole story. Quite a bit of those compani

At least for my country, NYT is correct that a large portion of the subsidies goes to few companies but that's not the whole story. Quite a bit of those companies are renting the land from regular people - land ownership is very fragmented here. The companies amass vast areas of rented land and, yes, the subsidies benefit them but what I've noticed that as a result of competition, the rents increase to a point where most, if not all of the subsidy, goes to the land owner, rather than the company that farms the land. So, it's not as simple as the article makes it seem but even with that in mind, it's far from a perfect system, as it doesn't do much to increase the competitiveness/productivity/sustainability of the EU agriculture sector. It's just a transfer of tax money to land owners, be they oligarchs or regular people.