(ROME) - The European Union's much-criticized farm subsidy system can be part of the solution to the global food crisis and not the problem, the EU's top farm official said Wednesday.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has long been denounced by critics as a way of generously protecting wealthy European farmers, at the expense of poorer non-EU countries whose produce cannot compete with subsidised European goods.

But EU farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel underlined that the CAP has been reformed over the last two decades.

"Reforms of the agricultural policy over the last 20 years have allowed farmers to respond better to market signals by increasing production when prices increase," she told a food crisis summit in Rome.

UN chief Ban Ki-Moon hit out at agricultural reforms in his opening speech at the three-day summit, warning that "beggar-thy-neighbour food policies cannot work, they only distort markets and force prices even higher.

"I call on nations to resist such measures and to immediately release exports designated for humanitarian purposes," he said in his keynote address to world leaders gathered here.

Fischer-Boel meanwhile said she was "concerned" about recent developments in negotiations on a global trade deal under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

World leaders are battling to agree an accord on the so-called Doha Development Round of talks this year, in particular before the change in US administration.

The EU official said a WTO deal "would allow export revenues to be increased, to stimulate agricultural production and allow access to foodstuffs."

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