Aid sector sees lingering woes in food aid crunch

By Missy Ryan

KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - A deepening global food crisis requires not only greater funding for food aid going to hungry nations, but long-term investment to improve agriculture productivity, especially in the developing world, officials and aid groups said on Monday.

"This is an increasingly difficult time. We need to get the right food to the right people at the right time," Jeffrey Borns, director of the largest U.S. food aid program, said at the U.S. government's annual conference on global food aid.

But as important, Borns said, are steps that might ease the dangerous toll that soaring food and fuel prices are taking on the most fragile nations -- greater investment to support farm sectors, to improve yields, and to lower trade barriers.

The revolution on commodity markets, which pushed up global food prices by almost 40 percent last year, cast a pall on the discussions in Kansas City, deep in American wheat country.

Not only are crop producers, shipping companies, and aid groups -- all of whom have a stake in the world's largest national food aid system -- making their perennial requests for larger aid budgets, they are warning that the price crunch squeezes donations at the worst possible time.

U.S. aid officials have already said they might be forced to cut back donations this year after their commodity costs jumped by more than 40 percent in the first half of fiscal 2008, adding around $200 million to the program's cost.

The United Nations' food aid agency is seeking an extra $500 million for its programs, and has given backers until May or June to provide enough new support to keep donations on track.

At the same time, need is growing in the developing world, where record prices for wheat, corn, rice and other crops make it harder to put food on the table.