I am also not so sure. However that means nothing. I am still on the way to get deeper into the farming problems before I have an own opinion based on facts. Still farmers have been producing too much over decades (the phrases “Butterberg”, means butter mountain and “Milchsee”, means milk lake) as they receive subsidaries. The more you produce the more you receive subsidaries, which is guaranteed. Hence milk is so cheap in Germany.
The problem seems to quite complexe in my opinion and I cannot yet blame Brussels for that. Anyway Germany is a pretty big part of “Brussels”, so we are also responsible for the situation.
Sorry I have conflated the farmers with the rest of my comments, but the next bit should have been a new paragraph as relates to general pace of change (non farming).
But in terms of farming - it’s a good example. They are suddenly try to stop a situation that was caused by the system in the first place for reasons unclear other than funding.
The way the UK manages such changes is to ensure they are buried in the long grass of “no change” - so if you have a supplement it doesn’t increase with inflation, which in reality means that over time there are incremental reductions which people do not physically see. This has a similar effect without the political outfall. Other changes here used to be pushed through by blaming the EU. We no longer have that option 
Annie, we have to keep in mind that “butterscotch” opened this thread for a different reason and we are being increasingly off-topic here.
So: sorry butterscotch, we will take more care, I promise. 
About your comment: I hope that this will not become a race against time, when more EU producers avoid business with the UK (fresh food producers) and at the same time UK must produce them in the UK or import them from the other side of the planet.
My comments weren’t off topic though because as I explained I voted remain but I have criticisms of the EU with which many leave voters would agree. The discussion becomes one not of identifying with “leave” or “remain” as separate tribes so to speak, but more about a venn diagram where people overlap into the opposite camps. There’s far too much emotion attached to the labels, which is unhelpful and a total distraction to the mess our government is making in general.
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Ah ok, that was my misunderstanding then. Sorry 
Is it possible that being part of a very large organisation, and producing butter and milk for the whole of the EU it’s very easy to over produce? When these things are produced locally from small family businesses there is less likely for over production and waste? The EU is not a family business friendly organisation. I would rather purchase local produce, albeit more expensive, than have it travelled the world and be full of preservatives or covered with some kind of protective supposedly edible, plastic…
Brits living in other part of Europe complain they can not find and buy their favourite UK food anymore and some even complain that they have to leave their properties and exit the country the reside every six months… What a mess for all parties involved.
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OGF had a look at the labels on fruit at breakfast. Cherries from Chile, Strawberries from Spain and lychees from Madagasgar. I don’t think I’d find any of these grown locally at this time of year. Plus I am sure you drink tea or coffee - the fairtrade coffee is from Kenya and now having a nice cup of breakfast tea made of a blend grown in both Kenya and the Brahmaputra estate (Assam). There is absolutely no chance that we will ever grow our own coffee and tea to any standard worth consuming. The goats milk (for tea) is from Yorkshire by the way (St Helen’s farm). But we can only produce a fraction of the foods we like to regularly consume.
I’m sure they can reduce the number of farmers in the EU over the longer term, but those at the center should do so gradually and with sensitivity rather than this bossy and officious approach.
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Until 1984 there was a price guarantee for milk. This was changed into a quota system (which ended 2015) as over production was too high.
I found an interesting article (in German) about that. Here is a small section which I had translated through deepl.com:
"Liberalisation of the EU dairy market
Since the early 1990s, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has aimed to integrate the agricultural sector into a more open global trading system through liberalisation. As part of this liberalisation process, the decision was made in 2003 to extend the EU milk quota system for the last time until 2015. This was because the EU milk quota system was no longer able to adequately support the producer price in the internal market due to the lower level of foreign trade protection in the milk sector.
Dairy farms were given back the responsibility to determine the volume of raw milk produced themselves. The state no longer intervenes in the decision on production volumes.
The crisis measures implemented during the 2015/16 milk crisis were also voluntary and non-binding in terms of their influence on milk volumes.
"
I found it at BMEL - Agrarmärkte - Paradigmenwechsel am Milchmarkt – von der Milchquotenregelung zu mehr Verantwortung der Marktakteure
Why do you think that the EU is not a family business friendly organisation?