The French government is launching a political campaign that will use global food insecurity and emerging shortages in developing countries to persuade fellow EU member states to support continued protection of Europe's agriculture sector.

At a high-level EU agriculture meeting in Luxembourg today, Michel Barnier, the French agriculture minister said that Europe must boost its food output and stick to its guns in resisting further cuts in the EU's agriculture budget.

"In a world where it will be necessary to produce more and better to feed nine billion people, evenyone has got to play a part, including Europe," he said. Mr Barnier argued that the responsibility of EU farmers was to produce food rather than biofuels and said that Europe had to remain "a strong agricultural power."

The French agricutlure minister blamed: "too much liberalism, too much trust in the free market. "

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

The French agriculture minister's message is expected to rouse opposition within Brussels where further cuts in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are being proposed by the Agriculture Commissioner, Marianne Fischer-Boel.

Sources in Brussels said today that the Commission believed that it was better to let farmers respond to higher food prices which should stimulate more output. "Our policy is to liberate production," said one Commission source.

The unwinding of the CAP's financial subsidies regime is vigorously opposed by France but supported by Britain and the Nordic countries and the French government is expected to push the food insecurity argument further when is assumes the EU presidency later this year.

The French minister's pitch for support for EU farmers followed a call for action from the World Bank over rapidly rising food prices amid concerns that food shortages and price increases were sparking a wave of violent protests in developing countries.

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 not just a question about short-term needs, as important as those are. This is about ensuring that future generations don't pay a price too."

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