European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans has labelled concerns over food security in Europe in the wake of the Ukraine war as “dishonest” and “irresponsible”.

Criticising opponents of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, he said they were unnecessarily causing worry among EU citizens.

The strategy sets targets to reach by 2030, including a 50pc cut in the use and risk of pesticides, 20pc cut in the use of fertilisers, 50pc cut in the sale of antimicrobials used for farm animals, and a target to increase the area of land dedicated to organic farming to 25pc.

“Those who did not like Farm to Fork to start with used the war as a pretext to come back to their old positions and try and stop Farm to Fork from happening,” said Mr Timmermans. “It is quite something that some people pretend that we have the risk of food shortages in Europe, which is not the case.”

While he conceded that there was a “serious problem” in the global market for wheat and maize as a result of the war, he said, “scaring people into believing that we might not have food on our table in Europe is irresponsible and frankly incredibly dishonest”.

Mr Timmermans said it needed to be understood that the Farm to Fork Strategy is an attempt to “save agriculture” and not to punish it in light of the devastating effects of biodiversity loss and climate-change effects on food production globally.

He said it’s vital there is no famine in Africa as a result of the war, but said this was “logistics and a financial problem”, and “not an issue of there not being enough wheat in the world”.

“Our citizens are already so terribly worried about so many things. And they are right to be worried about many things, but let’s not add to their anxieties with false problems just to try and safeguard your economic position in certain sectors,” he said.

The IFA has been very critical of the EU’s CAP, Green Deal and Farm to Fork plans, which it said further undermined the ability of Irish and EU farmers to produce food, and has called for the “damage” done in these policies to be reversed.

The Commission’s report on effects of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies was released in August and showed a 5-15pc decline in agriculture production and a 10pc increase in production costs.