World Food Program says £6bn needed to feed world’s hungry by World Food Programme & agencies 11:42pm 20th Apr, 2008   April 23, 2008    Food Crisis s Silent Tsunami. (Washington Post / The Guardian)    More than 100 million people are being driven deeper into poverty by a "silent tsunami" of sharply rising food prices, which have sparked riots around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding programs for 20 million children.    "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," the World Food Program (WFP), said. "The world"s misery index is rising."    The agecy likened the crisis to the giant Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 250,000 people and left 10 million destitute. “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.” The agency called for an aid effort similar to the £6bn given to help victims of the 2004 tsunami.    The WFP said that the price of a metric ton of rice in parts of Asia had risen from $460 to $1,000 in less than two months. People are simply being priced out of food markets.    The WFP was urgently seeking contributions to make up the difference as the situation becomes more dire in poor countries such as Bangladesh and Afghanistan that are heavily dependent on imported food.    The WFP"s main focus is on the "ultra-poor," those who earn less than 50 cents a day. Rising food prices means millions of people earning less than $2 a day are giving up health care and education. Those living on less than $1 a day were giving up meat and vegetables, and those living on less than 50 cents were facing increasingly desperate hunger.    The WFP is already being forced to cut back on school feeding programs that serve 20 million children. Without more emergency funding, a feeding program in Cambodia would be eliminated and programs in places such as Kenya and Tajikistan would be cut in half.    In Kenya"s Rift Valley, the cost of fertilizer has climbed 135 percent since December.That increase, along with rising prices for seed and diesel, led farmers to plant only one-third the crops they planted last year -- a pattern being repeated around the world.    Farmers have no access to credit, so when prices go up, they can"t afford to plant. The agency urged governments, particularly in developing nations, to invest more in programs to support domestic agriculture.    In some parts of the world, the WFP needs to provide food to people who have none. In other countries, food is plentiful but prices have risen so much that people cannot afford it.    At Strasbourg, Louis Michel, the European commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, told MEPs that the growing cost of basic food is “a worldwide humanitarian disaster in the making”.
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