headage

What will be the situation in relation to headage payments.

The headage payments in Greece for each holding have not risen since 1989-1991.

There are also proposals which would allow Member States to make additional headage and area payments.

Common agricultural policy reform proposals would introduce the ewe premium headage limitation over three years.

Will the level of headage payments under Objective 1 be continued under Objective 1 in transition areas?

Of the total livestock units in these areas - 14,688 million - 59% (8,713 m) are eligible for headage payments including 2,488 m dairy cows.

The CAP provided production-based direct (headage) which gave incentive to stock beef cattle and sheep at high densities.

The Single Farm Payment replaced the older headage payments (CAP) in 2005.

The MacSharry package would reduce headage limits for ewe premiums in less-favoured areas from 1,000 to 750 ewes.

Under the EU Common Agricultural Policy, subsidies known as headage payments are paid to producers based on the number of head of a specific type of livestock.

Before the HFA, hill farms we subsidized by the Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowances which were active as headage support to eligible beef cows and ewes.

It can link HLCA payments (including for the first time in the UK, for dairy cows) to agreed stocking levels on a hectarage (not headage) basis.

It is unacceptable to have headage limits for sheep - I do not mean new headage limits, but the present ones - because they do not deal with the problem.

But uncertainty in the predictability of income, a fall in the real value of headage support (Figure 2) notably for cattle, and the recent cost inflation continue to detract from the confidence required for long-term investment.

That is a great improvement, and I hope very much that the Commission will soon understand that headage limits do not reduce overproduction but merely discriminate against some of the poorest parts of the United Kingdom.

The talk here is of headage premiums being decoupled for now, sector-related systems of protection are being demanded and a whole series of derogations - on milk, for instance - are to be funded via the first pillar.

In one sense the headage payments are sometimes regarded as a social subsidy yet as Figure 2 illustrates they lack stability and responsiveness in regulating agricultural incomes and must therefore be considered also as vehicles for regulating agricultural production.