Reuters

WHO says farmers are inflexible? In rich countries, they have long justified farm hand-outs by pointing to low world prices for food (never mind that low prices were partly caused by their own subsidised overproduction). Without public cash, they said, farmers would desert the land, leaving meadows to brambly ruin. Now that the world is running short of food, the farm lobby has deftly changed tack. Prices for many crops are at record highs, the new line goes, and rich countries need to protect their farmers in order to ensure that their people get fed.

This mindless self-sufficiency is trotted out even in America, which is preparing a new farm bill. And it has been backed by the United Nations rapporteur on the “right to food”, Jean Ziegler, a Swiss professor who once applauded Cuba's agricultural policies.

But it is in Europe, with its notorious common agricultural policy (CAP), that farmers are bleating especially loudly. France, which has long scooped up more CAP money than any other country, leads the way. Not long ago, President Nicolas Sarkozy seemed to support CAP reform, asserting that farmers should live off their earnings, not from subsidies. But the French, who take over the EU presidency in July, are now pushing “community preference”—jargon for blocking food imports. To get round world trade rules, they are suggesting that imports satisfy EU environmental, hygiene or animal-welfare rules—which give ample scope to rig markets.

Michel Barnier, the French farm minister, wants joint European action on “food security”, and insists that feeding people is too important a task to be left to the market. Pledging “complete agreement” with French plans to recast the CAP, his German counterpart, Horst Seehofer, pours scorn on the idea that the developing world would be helped by reducing European farm protection. He says he does “not see how you can help the weak by hurting the strong.” Mr Seehofer thinks “food conflicts” lurk around the corner.

This is bad news for European consumers and taxpayers, who were promised a proper debate on CAP reform later this year. They will have to continue paying (€55 billion last year) for this wasteful and wicked system. It is terrible for poor-country farmers, who have long suffered from being shut out of rich-world markets, and having rich-world products dumped on them. Now they can hear the gates of fortress Europe clanging shut just when world prices should be triggering an export boom. And it is dreadful news for the hungry poor, because restricting trade in food exacerbates shortages.

The Europeans have made progress in reducing export subsidies and liberalising some markets; next year, for example, the EU should become a net importer of sugar for the first time. But reformers need to continue slashing import tariffs, which still average 23%. Now that European farmers are earning good money from what they do best—farming—there has never been a better time to reduce support. If the EU sticks to its offer in the Doha trade round, its farm-import tariffs would drop by just over half. Cutting them further would do more to ease hunger in poor countries than any foreign aid.

Fruit of the gloom

Defenders of the CAP and other rich-country farm policies cannot have it both ways. They cannot demand more money when prices are low, and then ask for extra protection when they rise. High food prices further undermine their already rotten arguments for support, and offer a golden opportunity to dismantle rich-country farm protection. Governments would be mad as a British cow not to take it.