BY now, it's almost a truism: the protectionist agricultural farm policies of the big, rich nations -- mainly the European Union, the United States and Japan -- are essentially barring poor countries from development.

That belief is what led to much of the bickering last week between trade ministers from rich and poor countries at the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong. Many development advocates argued that subsidies and tariff protections for farmers in industrialized countries lock poor farmers out of the rich world market. "High tariffs keep them out of key markets, and tariffs and subsidies together drive down the world price of their exports," wrote Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, in a recent opinion article in The Los Angeles Times. "Without the income that trade could provide, it is their children who go hungry and who are deprived of clean water, medicines and other basic necessities of life."

Virtually every economist will agree that agriculture is one of the world economy's most distorted sectors, and that dismantling industrialized nations' farm supports would give many farmers in the developing world better access to markets in wealthy countries.

However, some economists are warning that if the industrialized world ends its farm subsidies and lowers its tariff barriers to agricultural imports, poor countries may not be helped, but harmed.