FARMERS may be doing it tough and the world may be in recession, but Australian agricultural companies executives are raking in the dough.

Fifteen executives at five agricultural companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange were paid more than $1 million in remuneration during the past financial year.

Eight of those executives became millionaire salary earners for the first time.

Five executives from each of Incitec Pivot Limited and Nufarm Limited earned remuneration of more than $1 million.

Another five senior company executives - mostly from AWB and Futuris, but including Ruralco managing director John Maher - fell just short of joining the millionaires' club.

Remuneration is made up of salary and fees, bonuses, share options, superannuation and other payments. Some incentives are not necessarily paid out during the year but are attributed to it for accounting purposes.

The millionaires were led by Incitec Pivot Limited managing director Julian Segal, whose remuneration for year ended September 30, 2008, was $4.16 million, including short-term incentives and bonuses of $1.7 million.

Incitec Pivot recorded a record after-tax profit of $614.3 million during the year from revenue of $2.9 billion.

Nufarm made a $138 million after-tax profit during 2007-08 on revenue of $2.5 billion.

The chemical manufacturer paid managing director Doug Rathbone $2.8 million in remuneration for the year, making him the second top earner.

Former Elders rural services managing director Greg Hunt shows up as the third top earner among agri companies during 2007-08, although he left just weeks into the financial year.

Most of the $2.5 million paid to Mr Hunt by Futuris was in the form of $1.6 million in termination payment and leave entitlements of nearly $780,000.

His boss, Les Wozniczka, who also left Futuris, earned just less than $2.3 million for the 12 months to June 30, 2008.

Futuris had a turnover of $3.3 billion for the financial year and an after-tax profit of $84.2 million.

AWB managing director Gordon Davis was the fourth largest earner among the listed agricultural companies, taking home more than $2.3 million.

The grain trader and rural services company earned twice as much revenue ($6.5 billion) as Incitec Pivot but only about 10 per cent the profit ($65.3 million).

The agri executive rich-list might have included another millionaire - GrainCorp managing director Mark Irwin - if he'd served a full year. Mr Irwin earned remuneration of $567,000 for the second six months of GrainCorp's financial year, despite the company making a $19.9 million loss for 2007-08 on revenue of $1.5 billion.

ABB Grain Ltd continues to get value for money from its managing director, with Michael Iwaniw earning $783,000 during 2007-08.

An Incitec Pivot spokesman would not be drawn on the company's staff remuneration, referring The Weekly Times to statements by chairman John Watson, who told the Incitec Pivot annual meeting two weeks ago the remuneration strategy was designed to "attract and motivate employees of the highest calibre''.

"An important principle in the incentive plans is that the reward criteria are directly related to shareholder value,'' he said.