Back in April 1986 Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe made a powerful speech at the Lord Mayor’s Diplomatic Banquet in London in which he called for an an end to the global agriculture subsidy race. I remember it well, as I helped him draft it.

Some changes have happened since then. But not on a big enough scale.

Now, 22 years later as world food prices rise French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier blames … markets. He also urges the EU to produce more food.

And he’s right, up to a point. Supply is not keeping up with demand, in one way or the other. But why?

Who invented the idiotic incentive system which encourages Europeans to produce less, whilst consumers are obliged to pay more?

Are that sort of absurdity and the new price surges occurring because markets are not doing their job?

Or is in fact the the market mechanism doing exactly what it should do, namely telling us something about the folly of the huge array of government subsidy schemes round the planet which distort food production and distribution beyond any sensible measure?

Oscar Wilde famously wrote that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. It is always a pleasure to see that axiom in operation.

Which is why today I enjoyed reading the views of UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food (sic) Jean Ziegler:

Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund to change its policies on agricultural subsidies and to stop supporting only programs aimed at debt reduction. Agriculture should also be subsidied in regions where it ensured the survival of local populations, he said.

Mr Ziegler also accused the European Union of agricultural dumping in Africa. "The EU finances the exports of European agricultural surpluses to Africa … where they are offered at one half or one third of their (production) price," the UN official charged. "That completely ruins African agriculture," he added.

What a fine fellow. He sounds just like a distinguished European leader who almost described the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy as:

a programme which uses inefficient transfers of taxpayers money to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa, which we then fail to solve through inefficient but expensive aid programmes. The most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism.

Mr Ziegler also argued that using arable land to produce biofuel crops was a "crime against humanity".

Meanwhile Egypt, India, China and Vietnam are blocking exports of rice. And Argentina is limiting meat exports.

Am I missing something, or is there a theme here?

The EU’s taxpayers via their governments massively subsidise the EU’s food production.

The USA’s taxpayers via their government massively subsidise biofuel crops ("liquid pork").

Biofuels are being produced on this scale because governments are scurrying around trying to ‘do something’ on climate change, setting arbitrary targets (which of course the market loyally tries to meet).

Elsewhere government intervention is skewing options and denying choices.

And once a total planetary mess has been created by all these socialistic government schemes, a French Minister says the problem is … the market?

And the answer is, he says, … more EU food?

Oh lordy.

The tragedy is not that people talk such nonsense. It is that everyone else does not collapse in fits of laughter.

Here’s my answer.

Let’s follow Sir Geoffrey Howe’s wise advice, albeit belatedly.

Let’s quickly negotiate a new global treaty which bans at a stroke (ie on 1 January 2010) all subsidies and trade restrictions on anything that grows. Some of the colossal sums currently wasted on Western food subsidies and ‘development assistance’ could be used to help subsidy junkies break their sordid habit in a phased way and/or otherwise to help phase in quickly a normal market process. The rest should be given back to taxpayers in sizeable tax cuts.

Food prices would soon start to fall as far more people entered the market round the world, since they finally could sell their produce. Poor countries at last would have a chance to exploit their comparative advantage.

Trade would be free – and fair.

And life generally would be wonderful.