Asia calls for funding to fight food shock

By Andrew Hay and Natsuko Waki

MADRID (Reuters) - Over a billion Asians may sink back into extreme poverty without extra aid to counter soaring food prices, the region's development bank warned on Monday as a battle brewed over who would fund its spending.

The call for cash to secure food supplies for Asia -- home to two thirds of the world's poor -- was accompanied by debate on whether developing countries or rapidly expanding nations like China and India should foot the bill.

There was also tension over who was responsible for a more than 40 percent rise in global food prices in the year to March that has triggered violent riots in Africa and Asia.

"The global fight against poverty will be won or lost in our region," Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda said in a keynote speech to delegates at the bank's annual meeting.

Asia risks rising social tension as a doubling of wheat and rice prices in the last year slams poor families who spend more than half their income on food, Japan's finance minister warned.

With grain stocks at their lowest levels in decades, turmoil in global financial markets and an uncertain outlook for the world economy, Kuroda made a plea for "money and ideas" to boost development and rescue millions from hunger and malnutrition.

"The absence of such measures could seriously undermine the global fight against poverty and erode the gains of the past decades," he said.

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