[gbraad]

Are you a farmer speaking out of experience? I can tell you from family that your perception is wrong.

This subsidizing is not a EU standard practice, and not for all sectors of agricultural development. This idea that subsidizing offsets the loss of livestock sounds weird to me, as is the risk of a human attack. Europe is far more densely populated than most other places that have to deal with bears, coyotes or so, plus... You are allowed to take precautions, that we are not; a spray might harm the animal.

[AlotOfReading]

The EU has a €300B program directly subsidizing farmers [0]. To quote the wiki page:

     The [EAGF] consumes a large part of the general budget of the European Union. 

Apparently the overarching CAP program consumes something like 30+% of the budget, so I'd love to know what you consider "heavily subsidized" if this doesn't merit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Agricultural_Guarante...