Europe’s system of milk production quotas may be phased out to help the dairy industry prepare for their planned abolition in 2014, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said on Sunday. Created in the mid-1980s to deal with the European Union’s notorious milk surpluses. “I think the milk quota system will be inadequate when we put constraints on the sector to develop and be competitive in future, if we do not give the possibilities for producers to increase production without having to invest (what is) in some member states a very high price to buy a milk quota,” she said. There are huge differences around the EU in the price of traded milk production quotas for farmers wishing to produce milk that qualifies for EU subsidies.
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