EU citizens ‘willing to support farms’
Mr Sutherland, who was delivering the Michael Dillon Memorial Lecture, said people in many, if not all, EU states do not resent what is spent on farmers.
"If there is a price to be paid for maintaining rural communities, maintaining the countryside and having good local products in the shops, then taxpayers and consumers generally appear ready to pay a price so long as there are also cheaper options available in the shops for the less well off."
The lecture was organised by the Guild of Agricultural Journalists and sponsored by Kerry Group.
Mr Sutherland said the EU has failed to convince its counterparts in the WTO that anything has really changed for farmers in Europe.
For the rest of the world, EU agriculture continues to be a non-competitive, economic dinosaur hiding behind high tariff walls and propped up by limitless sacks of taxpayers' money, but the reality is quite different.
However, he said further reforms are required and these may facilitate a move towards a solution of the current WTO talks.
