President François Hollande has reversed decades of French farm policy by channelling subsidies away from intensive, highly-mechanised producers towards smaller, more traditional farms, reports The Independent.
In a judgment much-awaited in rural France, Mr Hollande took advantage of new rules in European Union agriculture policy to switch cash away from the vast cereal and dairy farms which have traditionally gobbled up the biggest share of EU subsidies.
For most of the last half-century, France has justified European farm subsidies on the grounds that they protect family farms, rural employment and high-quality food production. At the same time, it has defended policies in Brussels which channel most European cash towards the largest, least environmentally-friendly and most mechanised farms.
Mr Hollande told a conference of cattle-producers in the Auvergne that this would now end. He would use the more flexible rules agreed for the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) in July to divert EU cash away from big, rich cereals farmers and towards smaller beef, dairy, sheep, fruit and vegetable producers.
Read more of this report from The Independent.