Extra 100m now can’t afford to buy food: WFP

Executive Director of UN World Food Programme Josette Sheeran (2-R) attends a meeting of food producers, retailers and consumers to deal with the growing world food crisis in London on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

The world faces a "silent tsunami" of soaring food prices and more must be done to help secure future supply, the UN food agency said Tuesday as experts gathered in London for a special summit on the problem.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said an extra 100 million people who previously did not require help could now not afford to buy food.
It said the soaring prices threatened anti-poverty and health improvement initiatives in the world's poorest nations and left a 755-million-dollar hole in the organisation's 2.9-billion-dollar budget.
"This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," said WFP executive director Josette Sheeran in a statement.
"The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions."
Food prices have risen rapidly since the last quarter of 2007, blamed in varying degrees on rising populations, the use of biofuels to combat climate change, higher demand from developing countries, natural disasters and higher fuel prices.
Price hikes for staples such as rice -- which is now nearing the 1,000 dollars per tonne mark, more than double the cost in early March -- have led to riots and protests in a number of developing countries.
In the latest unrest, demonstrators took to the streets in the Afghan city of Jalalabad and the Gabonese capital Libreville on Tuesday.
The Asian Development Bank, which believes the increases mark the end of the cheap food era, said it was a distribution rather than a food shortage problem, while Thailand has attacked critics for laying the blame at biofuel producers.
Sheeran, who described the situation as a "wake-up" call about the threats to food supply, refused to pinpoint one reason for the crisis, instead stressing the urgent need for action by governments and world bodies.
She was later one of 25 experts in the field who attended a summit on the subject hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at his Downing Street offices.
A statement from Brown's office released after the meeting said that delegates pledged to work with the G8 and EU towards a global strategy to tackle price rises and increase support for the world's poorest nations.