Reducing livestock subsidies

Farming can be regarded as a balance, with farmers first choosing between livestock or arable systems, then choosing their type of livestock, then the specific production system, then the stocking rate and, finally, the output per head. This balance has always been sensitive to local environmental and market conditions but is now heavily affected by the large 'weights' put into the system through price support and headage payments – affecting the choice of livestock systems and encouraging more intensive production. To counter the resulting over-production, a whole set of constraints has been introduced: milk quotas, sheep quotas, suckler cow quotas and holding limits for beef premium payments, but nothing has been done to address the original distortionary effect of the subsidies.