France has launched a political campaign to restore food protectionism at the heart of Europe’s agriculture policy as food riots erupt in poor countries and global leaders give warning of the dire consequences of soaring grain prices.

At a high-level EU agriculture meeting in Luxembourg, Michel Barnier, the French Agriculture Minister, called on Europe to establish a food security plan and to resist further cuts in Europe’s agriculture budget.

Mr Barnier said that the EU should not bow to pressure from the World Trade Organisation to reduce further its agricultural subsidies but instead should increase aid to farmers in developing countries.

The French initiative at the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council follows a week in which food riots toppled the Government of Haiti and the President of the World Bank voiced concerns about the consequences of food price escalation.

It also coincides with Gordon Brown’s calling for concerted international action to tackle rising food prices, including a world trade deal that cuts subsidies to richer countries.

In a speech at Goldman Sachs in London today, the Prime Minister is to raise questions about the effect that the rapid move towards biofuels is having on food production and prices.

Mr Brown, who is trying to get the issue on to the agenda of the G8 summit in Japan in July, says today that a doubling of wheat and rice prices has pushed world food prices up by 45 per cent, while food reserves are at their lowest for 30 years.

He will call for a trade deal that allows poorer countries greater access to developed world markets, as well as international support for agricultural research and short-term help with imports from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for countries suffering balance of payments difficulties. Mr Brown is also urging the chairman of the G8 group of industrialised nations to lead an international plan on food prices. He wants Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese Prime Minister, to ask the World Bank, IMF and UN to work together on a strategy.

Robert Zoellick, the President of the World Bank, said that a doubling of food prices in two years was pushing 100 million people into deeper long-term poverty.

“We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that,” Mr Zoellick said after a meeting of the IMF and World Bank’s Development Committee yesterday.

“This is about ensuring that future generations don’t pay a price too.”

With deft political timing, the French Agriculture Minister blamed economic liberalism and “too much trust in the free market” for the soaring cost of food.

He said: “We must not leave the vital issue of feeding people to the mercy of market laws and international speculation.”

The unwinding of the financial subsidies and quotas in the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy is vigorously opposed by France but supported by Britain and the Nordic countries. The French Government is expected to push forward its arguments in favour of greater food security when it assumes the EU presidency in July.

France has resisted calls for big cuts in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget demanded by emerging market countries and Mr Barnier’s intervention comes as global trade talks that would free up trade in agriculture reach a key juncture in Geneva.

The French push for greater support for European farmers is likely to be resisted by Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU Agriculture Commissioner who has argued for further CAP reforms.

Diplomatic sources in Brussels said that the Commission believed higher food prices would stimulate farming output.

“Our policy is to liberate production,” said one Commission source.

The worsening global food shortages are adding urgency to a last-ditch attempt to secure agreement in the Doha Round of trade talks that has set powerful emerging market countries, such as Brazil and India, against the US and EU. Six nations— the US, EU, Brazil, Canada, Japan and Australia — are believed to have agreed a formula for setting tariffs on agriculture and industrial goods.

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