UN food agency fears hunger crisis

The announcement by the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation followed Russia's decision to extend its ban on wheat exports and violent unrest over the soaring cost of staples in Mozambique.

Moscow's export ban is considered in some quarters as partly responsible for the 5 per cent increase in food prices worldwide over the last two months, which have reached their highest level in two years.

UN spokesman Christopher Matthews said the meeting of the inter-governmental committee on grains, scheduled for September 24, aimed to address the concerns of the large number of countries worried about a possible repeat of the 2008 food crisis.

Agency officials and other experts have stressed that conditions are different from two years ago, when high oil prices and growing demand for biofuels pushed world food stocks to their lowest levels since 1982.

Yet internationally the picture is not reassuring.

In China speculators are being targeted in a crackdown and a 30 per cent rise in cooking oil prices planned for next week has led trade unions in Serbia to call for mass demonstrations.

And in Egypt, where half the population depends on subsidised bread, the crisis could impact on coming parliamentary elections because the regime's increasingly tenuous legitimacy rests on its ability to provide citizens with cheap bread.

In Mozambique, where more than half the population survives in abject poverty, the price of bread rose 25 per cent in the past year and fuel and water prices have also spiralled upwards.

Anger spilled onto the streets of Maputo on Wednesday, when heavy-handed policing of a protest calling for government intervention prompted rioting and looting. Police opened fire, killing at least seven and leaving scores injured.

Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition executive director Marc Van Ameringen said the price rises ere hitting a country already seriously affected by malnutrition.

More than four out of 10 Mozambican children suffer from stunted growth and nearly 20 per cent of under-fives are underweight.

Over a billion people around the world are hungry and malnourished and another billion are not getting proper nutrition from the food they do manage to obtain.

"These crises should remind the world that we already have a crisis, even before this food price spike," Mr Van Ameringen declared.