Development ministers urge action on food prices

Top finance and development officials from around the globe on Sunday called for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest will spread unless the cost of basic staples is contained.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said at the end of a meeting of the IMF and World Bank's Development Committee. Mr Zoellick and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have said the issue of skyrocketing food prices needs to be front and centre at the highest political levels.

While Mr Brown said he would raise it at an upcoming meeting of the Group of Eight powerful nations, Mr Zoellick said that would be too late. "Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait," he told a news conference.

Concerns about food costs took on new urgency as senators in Haiti ousted the Prime Minister after a week of food-related rioting in which at least five people died. There have also been protests in Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso in Africa, and in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In just two months, rice prices have shot up around 75 per cent, closing in on historic highs. Meanwhile, the cost of wheat has climbed by 120 per cent over the past year, more than doubling the price of bread in most poor countries.

The problem is most worrying in developing countries where food represents a larger share of what consumers buy. It threatens to sharply increase malnutrition and hunger, while reversing progress in reducing poverty and debt burdens among the poorest nations.

Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said rising food costs threatened to stir more social unrest.

One of the main factors behind the surge in prices is the increased use of crops for biofuels as an alternative energy source. Almost all of the rise in global corn production from 2004 to last year went to biofuels in the US.