The Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion is warn­ing that another food cri­sis could occur soon. The FAO says that food pro­duc­tion in the under-developed world needs increase to pro­tect those coun­tries from sharp hikes in food prices.

From Reuters, writer Daniel Flynn attended a speech made by FAO direc­tor Jacques Diouf.

In an inter­view ahead of a global sum­mit on food secu­rity in Rome next week, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said more aid was needed to curb the ris­ing num­ber of hun­gry peo­ple in the world, which topped 1 bil­lion for the first time this year.

“There is a lack of pri­or­ity in fight­ing hunger and poverty at the high­est polit­i­cal level, not only in devel­oped coun­tries but in devel­op­ing coun­tries,” Diouf told Reuters on Monday.

“The fun­da­men­tals that led to the cri­sis in 2007–2008 are almost all still there, except for oil prices,” he added, cit­ing cli­mate change shocks like droughts in Africa, strong pop­u­la­tion growth in devel­op­ing coun­tries and use of bio-fuels.

Prices of food sta­ples like cere­als dou­bled in many parts of the world in 2007–2008, spark­ing protests and rioting.

Rich nations responded by rais­ing out­put by 13 per­cent, but devel­op­ing coun­tries were only able to man­age a 2.7 per­cent increase, Diouf said. Exclud­ing China, India and Brazil, the rise in out­put was an anaemic 0.7 percent.

“No won­der that in those coun­tries prices have remained very high,” said Diouf, not­ing that food prices had barely eased from their peaks of last year in many devel­op­ing nations.

Rich nations needed to raise the share of aid ear­marked for agri­cul­ture to 17 per­cent, from 5 per­cent at present, to pro­vide farm­ers in poor nations with irri­ga­tion, fer­til­iz­ers, disease-resistant seeds, stor­age for their crops and roads to take them to mar­ket, Diouf said.