Food crisis

"The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a "new area of hunger" in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being "priced out of the food market" because of rising food prices.

In response to increasing food prices, Egypt has widened its food rationing system for the first time in two decades while Pakistan has reintroduced a ration card system that was abandoned in the mid-1980s.

The world's poor countries will have to pay 35 per cent more for their cereals imports, taking the total cost to a record $33.1bn (€22.3bn) (in the year to July 2008), even as their food purchases fall 2 per cent, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. The US Department of Agriculture warned last week that high agricultural commodities prices would continue for at least the next two to three years." (Thanks D.)

More about the problem of food aid in the context of rising food prices here.