FARM subsidies for food will soon be a thing of the past. Mr Peter Sutherland, director general of the World Trade Organisation, told producers yesterday.
Mr Sutherland, who played a key role in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade settlement which lowered world trade barriers, told delegates at an Oxford farming conference that pressure to cut farm support costs was growing internationally.
Change would be brought about by the demands of macro-economics in individual countries rather than as a result of Gatt, he said.
"I think there will be change driven by the refusal of society to bear the cost. The changes which have already been made to the Common Agricultural Policy are a reflection of that."
The policy, with its system of subsidies, costs European taxpayers about £28 billion a year - 60 per cent of total European Union spending.
British and French speakers agreed that farm subsidies were on the way out.
M Francis Capell, a director of the French Wheat Growers' Association, who farms 900 acres of cereals in northern France, surprised delegates by saying most French farmers would welcome the move away from subsidies and the increasing EU bureaucracy.
But cutting subsidies, which created surpluses to be dumped cheaply on world markets, the price of grain worldwide would increase as supply and demand came into balance. Farmers would benefit, he said.
Farmers in the Third World would also welcome the move because they would get higher prices for their cereals to build up their own farming economies.
As a result of the subsidy cuts, the number of farmers would fall in France from about 800,000 to 500,000 by the year 2000, he said.
Of those, only 150,000 would be full-time farmers. The rest would be "week-end" farmers with jobs elsewhere.
A new green Common Agricultural Policy, ending the payment of subsidies to farmers for producing food, is urged today by the Council for the Protection of Rural England.
Ms Fiona Reynolds, director of the council, will tell the national conference on Organic Food Production at Cirencester that there is a "growing consensus" for reform.
