As fears mount that sweeping reforms could put thousands of jobs at risk, more than 200 invited sugar beet growers, mostly from York and North Yorkshire will converge at a meeting with the National Farmers' Union (NFU) and British Sugar at Askham Bryan on Friday.

The meeting comes hard on the heels of a get-together between the NFU's national sugar beet chairman, Mike Blacker, and two Labour MEPs - Richard Corbett and Terry Wynn, at Mr Blacker's farm in Newton-on-Ouse.

Both meetings are aimed at mobilising support and encouraging Yorkshire growers to lobby Ministers, MPs, MEPs and regional development agencies on the reform proposals being put forward by the European Commission.

The proposals, which include drastic cuts in production of up 16 per cent across the UK coupled with significant price cuts, have been developed in response to concerns over the effects of so-called "dumping" of surplus European sugar on world markets.

The review has been welcomed cautiously by the region's 1,400 producers, who accept that some reform is necessary to ensure a sustainable European sugar industry in the long term.

But they say the scale of the proposals, which are designed to impact on all aspects of the sugar sector, threatens to cripple one of the real success stories of British agriculture in recent years.

Mr Blacker said the implications of the proposed reforms had not been thought through. "It's suggested that sweeping reforms are needed to meet World Trade Organisation agreements," he said.

"But reality is never that simple or straightforward and the worry is that UK producers will pay the price for reforms designed to target over-protected producers in other parts of the EU."

Britain is already contributing to fair trade targets, resisting the temptation to become self-sufficient in sugar. In fact, the UK is unusual in that half its sugar requirements are already imported - much of it from developing countries in the Caribbean, parts of Africa and the Pacific region.

Mr Blacker said: "Sugar beet is a wonderful crop that is transformed into a wide range of sustainable products from animal feed to fuel. Indeed an area half the size of a football pitch planted with sugar beet could generate enough fuel to run a family car for a year." .

The crop, largely produced on family farms, generated 20,000 jobs nationwide dependent in some way on the industry - more than 2,000 of them on Yorkshire farms alone.

Updated: 11:17 Wednesday, November 10, 2004