Food aid of three billion dollars promised
Updated
Pledges of almost $US3 billion of emergency aid have been made at a food price crisis summit being held in Rome.
But United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon has warned up to $20 billion a year will be needed to avoid disaster.
The UN World Food Program announced $1.2 billion in new food aid to help the tens of millions of people hardest hit by the crisis.
The Islamic Development Bank says it will also spend $1.5 billion on agriculture in the poorest countries.
The UN secretary general says the world is duty bound to act immediately.
"This is a fight we cannot afford to lose," he said.
"Hunger degrades everything we have been fighting for in recent years and decades.
"Recent riots and protests show that hunger and the threat of hunger breed unrest and instability."
Hopes to source food from developiong nations
The United Nations World Food Program has signed a deal saying it will try to source most of its food from developing countries rather than shipping it in from abroad.
The head of the WFP, Josette Sheeran, says the commitment is a powerful incentive to agricultural production in Africa.
She also says the program is starting to distribute cash rather than food in places like the delta region of Burma, which was devastated by a cyclone last month.
"I was in one area of the Delta where there's food in the markets, but people have been cut off from their livelihoods," she said.
"They can't get to work, they're rebuilding their houses, and we are deploying the first emergency cash operation where we're supplying people with 50 cents a day to be able to buy the cups of rice - rather than supplying the rice itself."
