EUROPEAN Union agriculture ministers held their nerve last week amid world financial turmoil to pass far-reaching agricultural reforms.

These include the abolition of setting aside arable land (where farmers are obliged not to produce anything on 10 per cent of their land), increasing milk quotas (which will end in 2015) and directing a portion of farmer subsidies into rural development payments.

The Rural Development Fund will be reshaped to provide a better response to the new issues faced by European agriculture, including climate change, better water management and biodiversity and the production of green energy.

And the practice of stockpiling surplus production will instead focus on developing safety nets for commodity groups, particularly dairy, grains and pigmeat.

But with the European Commission retaining the ability to squirrel away surplus butter and skim milk powder to help "manage" markets, some would say the process is a bit half-hearted.

Nonetheless, it was a brave call to press ahead with the changes amid such unprecedented world volatility.

And, as is par for course, the reforms have been watered down from opening negotiations, which were drawn up when markets were seeing shortages and farmer prices were buoyant.

The policy that has brought the heaviest criticism is the way in which shackles will be removed from milk production.

The intention is provide farmers with a "soft landing" and to remove risks of governments being sued for the removal of production entitlements.

Member states can select their own recipes to transition towards unravelling the system, so an unholy morass of distortions will develop.

The approach on quotas will be reviewed again in 2010 and 2012, which some claim will create confusion rather than finality.

It has taken almost a year to get these changes across the line, and bigger brawls lay ahead for EU agriculture ministers.

First, there is a revision of the overall EU budget, which promises to see further restructuring of support for primary production and rural infrastructure.

The EU's farm support system has long been an area of heated debate, consuming about 40 per cent of the overall EU budget.

Farmers can expect to see even less money directed to their accounts based on production - and more into fixing the state of infrastructure in the eastern regions of the bloc, which have a long way to go to enjoy the services and access of Western members.

This package surprised the US which, by its own analysis, didn't think it would be passed.

Regardless of that, none of the topics tackled in these changes deals with the issues in the frozen WTO Doha round.