Global food prices will fall from record peaks in the next few years, but the cost of feeding the family will still be far higher than in the past decade, an international study forecast on Thursday.
The recent price surge has added to the number of people in extreme hunger and some humanitarian aid is "urgently required," the OECD said in a joint survey with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
But they warned that food subsidies and trade protection are not the answer, saying that high prices might even be part of the solution by stimulating neglected investment in agriculture in poor countries. Raising food supplies in poor countries also depended on raising the quality of government and improving policies in fields from infrastructure to property rights, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the FAO said.
The survey also warned that the price bubble had endangered the UN Millennium Development Goal of eradicating hunger, and it was strongly sceptical about the benefits of agriculture-based biofuels.
However, the "transitory nature" of some of the factors behind the recent trend meant that prices would fall from record peaks. In a separate report, the FAO listed 22 mainly African countries which it said were "especially vulnerable" to rising food and fuel prices because of high levels of chronic hunger, dependency on imports of petroleum products, and a reliance on imports of major grains like rice and wheat.
Eritrea, Niger, the Comoro Islands, Botswana, Haiti and Liberia face all three risk factors, the report notes. The other countries, in order of severity, are Burundi, Tajikistan, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Zambia, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Cambodia, North Korea, Rwanda and Kenya.