BRUSSELS Asian farmers, among the poorest in the world, understand their European colleagues' hunger for subsidies but not at the expense of fair trade for their own produce.

And they are determined to make their case ahead of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on the sensitive issue next month.

Three lobby groups representing more than 260 million farmers in the European Union and Asia came together last week for their first organised exchange of views in the run-up to next month's WTO meeting.

Delegates to the two-day meeting in Brussels, which ended Friday, agreed that farming was not just a trade issue but was vital to the lifeblood of any society.

But lavish subsidies under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy unfairly skew world trade in food, according to Raul Montemayor, the Philippine president of the Asian Farmers' Group for Cooperation (AFGC).