By COLIN JAMES

It is time New Zealand began educating the public of Europe and other countries that heavily subsidise agriculture, says Professor Stefan Tangerman, director of the agriculture division of the OECD.

"Don't just talk to Governments, but also to the public," he told a business audience in Wellington in a speech urging rich-country agriculture reform.

Tangerman has been in this country for talks with ministers and officials. New Zealand abandoned subsidies nearly 20 years ago.

His advice runs counter to New Zealand's careful forbearance for more than 30 years from pitching to European voters for fear of upsetting their Governments.

But voters as consumers and taxpayers - and therefore the bill-payers for agricultural supports - are a potentially important driver of reform, which Tangerman said OECD analysis had shown would benefit farmers as well as consumers.

The OECD is pushing Governments to drop border protection, price and input supports which artificially boost production in favour of direct support of needy farmers' incomes and non-trade objectives, such as the environment, not directly related to agricultural production levels.

Tangerman acknowledged that there might be difficulties for Governments with their voters. The costs of present policies are hidden in high food prices. Direct supports are more visible.

His way into voters' hearts and minds: start by exposing the cost of the export subsidies that are needed to get rid of the surpluses produced by present supports.

Tangerman said present supports shifted the cost of adjustment from rich countries' protected farmers to farmers in other countries, most notably in poor countries.

This echoed the view of Agriculture and Trade Minister Jim Sutton, a minister in the 1984-90 Labour Government which unilaterally desubsidised farmers. Rich-country protectionism is "hurting farmers in Africa, South America and Asia and damaging the welfare of the world", Sutton said, introducing Tangerman.

But Tangerman does not appeal to rich-country farmers' sense of equity and decency. He says reform is in their self-interest.

Farmers get only one-quarter of the support provided by market price supports. The rest goes to non-farming interests, including non-farming landowners and suppliers of inputs such as fertiliser. They get even less from input supports.

And even among farmers, the bulk of such support goes not to the poorest, but to richer ones.

"Ninety per cent goes to the largest 25 per cent of farmers," he said.