U.N. food aid funds growing, but needs growing too

By Missy Ryan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Food Program, facing an unprecedented surge in the price of food it buys for the world's hungry, has secured about 60 percent of the extra funds it needs to cover planned aid donations this year, the head of the United Nations agency said on Tuesday.

"We put out an extra appeal for $755 million and we're about 60 percent of the way there," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a speech at a Washington think tank.

But the agency has already been forced to cut some of the food rations it provides and its $755 million gap does not include new, emerging hunger needs that will require an additional $418 million to $430 million this year.

Sheeran, a former Bush administration official, said the world's food delivery system was "groaning under the strain of skyrocketing demand, the soaring cost of inputs, depleted stocks, crop loss due to drought, floods and severe weather."

The surge in global prices for staples such as bread, rice and milk over the last year has pushed the world into a deepening crisis that Sheeran said could well be the first truly globalized humanitarian emergency.

World leaders are calling for urgent steps to ease costs, create a larger cushion of food across harvests and diffuse the food panic that has triggered protests and even riots across the developing world.

"It is said that a hungry man is an angry man," Sheeran said.

Through March 2008, global food prices jumped an annual 43 percent, U.S. officials say, and many experts believe the higher prices will linger for at least two to three years.