By Evan Davis BBC Economics editor

Farming issues are the key to renewed WTO negotiations

An uneasy truce has broken out in a curiously pedantic row between the World Trade Organisation and the EU over the precise description of agricultural subsidies paid to farmers in rich countries.

It's all part of the manoeuvring as rich and poor countries struggle to restart world trade talks that stalled last autumn during a meeting at Cancun, Mexico.

The argument between the organisations effectively concerns the use of the word "subsidy" to describe support for agriculture in rich nations.

The European Commission and the World Trade Organisation had an exchange of angry letters over comments by the Director-General of the WTO in which he accused the rich countries of excessive agriculture subsidies.

Pascal Lamy, Europe's trade commissioner, complained that his remarks were misleading and exaggerated the size of those subsidies.

When is a subsidy not a subsidy?

It's an issue that has set the EU at loggerheads with other international organisations.

The EU wants to play down the scale of its support for farmers - sensitive to the accusation that it care more about cows than fair trade with other countries.

Trade in textiles is another contentious topic

So the recent spat got going when the director general of the WTO referred to rich countries supporting farmers to the tune of $300bn per year.

Not true, said the EU, in an angry letter. An "extremely annoying" claim, it said; farm subsidies are only $100bn per year.

Now to you or me, $100bn - or $300bn - is still quite a lot.

But the EU was taking a somewhat pedantic line to get the number down.

Rich countries pay out about a hundred billion in taxpayer subsidies.

But, in addition, rich countries keep food prices high by restricting imports.

That means consumers pay more to farmers than they otherwise would.

And that's worth far more to farmers - especially EU farmers - than taxpayer outlays.

High food prices are not direct subsidies, but they are equivalent to a subsidy. Trade talks resume

But whatever you call them, they're too big to be pushed under the carpet.

Farm subsidies of one kind or another are a contentious issue in the world trade system.

At the moment, negotiators in Geneva are grappling with the issue of how to do define agricultural subsidies, and to what extent they should be phased out.

Some poor countries are getting fed up with the protracted talks which have been going on since 2001.

They plan to challenge the agricultural subsidies, especially to sugar and cotton, through the disputes procedure of the WTO, seeking damages against the rich countries.

With the US election pending, few major concessions are expected this year despite the original pledge to complete the trade talks by 2005.

Both the EU and the WTO say the recent argument is now closed.

The battle over agricultural subsidies, meanwhile, has a long way to run.