Food prices push 40 mln more people into hunger in 2008

FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem cited the preliminary findings when presenting the FAO's hunger report for this year.

"For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," he said.

Although world food prices including major cereals have dropped since early 2008, the Food Price Index was still 28% higher in October 2008 than in October 2006, the report says.

"If lower prices and the credit crunch associated with the economic crisis force farmers to plant less food, another round of dramatic food prices could be unleashed next year," Ghanem said.

The vast majority of the world's undernourished people live in developing countries. Sixty-five percent of them live in India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia, according to a 2007 report by the State of Food Insecurity in the World.

By RIA Novosti