Area payments are one of basic instruments of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy. The paper’s purpose was to assess the intensity of phenomenon of land owners withdrawing from obtaining Single Area Payments (SAPs). The conducted research showed large diversification of the Małopolska and Pogórze regions in terms of changes of the number of SAP beneficiaries. Land owners from territorial units characterized by intensive recessive phenomena in agriculture, i.e. a relatively greater land area characterized by a poor condition of agriculture and a higher share of farms without agricultural income were more inclined to resign from area payments.