EU moves to shift supports from larger to smaller farms, ease dairy quotas

European farm policy, pushed into bizarre and fantastic shapes over the years by the need to reduce mountains of surplus cereals and butter, must now adjust to a strange new world of booming demand and food shortages.

EU planners this week announced they would cut subsidies to big farms and drop compulsory 10 percent set-aides that had been designed to reduce crop surplus. The larger the farms received the steepest cuts as a percentage of their payments. The change lessens incentives for cereal-grain production and boosts support for producers of beef, vegetables and fruit. Full story