By Patrick Worsnip
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The cost of feeding the world's hungry has spiked nearly 40 percent, primarily because of spiraling food costs and oil prices, the World Food Program's executive director said on Thursday.
Unless the gap can be plugged by donor governments, the U.N. food agency will need to trim its operations, Josette Sheeran told reporters in New York by video link from WFP headquarters in Rome.
The WFP, which aims to feed 73 million people in 80 countries this year, is funded entirely by voluntary donations.
It has been hard hit by recent sharp rises in the prices of basic foods like grains. Rice prices in Thailand, the world's top exporter, rose to $1,000 per metric ton on Thursday, nearly three times their level at the start of the year. Oil prices this week hit a record of almost $120 a barrel.
If the WFP wants to maintain the programs originally outlined in this year's budget, donors need to contribute an extra $755 million. That is up from a $500 million estimate two months ago.
The higher food prices also have triggered new requests for assistance, totaling $418 million so far, Sheeran said. That included $77 million requested by Afghanistan to feed 2.5 million "newly urgently hungry people," and extra Iraqi refugees in Syria and elsewhere.
Altogether, WFP's total requirements for 2008 have risen to $4.3 billion.
It was unclear what additional requests might arrive from other countries like Haiti, scene of food price riots two weeks ago, Sheeran said.
If the funding gap cannot be filled, she said, "we will need to be rolling back in the coming weeks our core work that's already assessed and already decided."
WFP funding normally comes in as the year progresses. But agency spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said it had received just $1 billion, or less than one quarter of the total needed for 2008.
Sheeran blamed the food price increases on a "perfect storm" of factors including dietary changes like higher meat consumption in China and elsewhere, high oil prices, natural disasters in several regions and use of farmland to produce biofuels.
But she said that in the long term she was optimistic "because the world knows how to produce enough food."
Africa currently produces one-tenth of the agricultural yields of elsewhere, but with national and foreign investment to improve yields and infrastructure, "I think now we're seeing a much greater focus on those long-term solutions," she said.
