France pushes EU to support farming as food prices soar

Amid soaring global food prices, leading to rioting in Africa and beyond, France is pushing its EU partners to respond swiftly and return agriculture to the top of its agenda.

French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier -- whose country has the biggest farming sector in Europe -- has said he will urge his EU counterparts, at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, to come up with a "European initiative on food security" throughout the world.

He has stressed the urgency of the problem as unrest linked to the price hikes in cereals and other basic foodstuffs multiplies throughout the world, notably in Africa but recently also in Haiti.

Haiti's prime minister was ousted Saturday in a no-confidence vote after more than a week of violent demonstrations over rocketing food and fuel prices.

The soaring prices of basic foodstuffs could cause a "humanitarian tsunami" in Africa, where a high proportion of household income goes on food, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel warned earlier this month.

For France, which will assume the EU's rotating presidency in July, and others that means the agricultural sector must concentrate on food production and moves to drastically cut the EU's farming subsidies should be resisted.

As far as food production is concerned, the EU has already taken some measures, increasing milk quotas and scrapping a requirement to let some land lie fallow.

On the other hand EU nations have also made the use of biofuels a key plank of a climate change package, a move which detractors argue is a direct threat to food production in Europe and elsewhere.

The French government pushed its message in the Liberation daily on Friday.

"Europe, with its high-performing farming sector and its common policy must clearly play a providing and regulating role on world food markets," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, European Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet and Human Rights Minister Rama Yade among others in a published joint statement.