The global economic crisis has contributed to pushing the number of hungry people in the world above 1 billion for the first time, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper.

The credit crunch is exacerbating the impact of soaring food price inflation in 2007 and 2008, which had already boosted the ranks of the chronically hungry from less than 850 million before the food crisis to 963 million by the end of last year.

FAO director Jacques Diouf told the FT on Thursday that number had increased, and "unfortunately, we are already quoting a number of 1 billion people on average for this year".

An FAO spokesperson was unable to confirm the figure, adding that no new official data had been produced since December.

Diouf told the newspaper the financial crisis is worsening the hunger situation through higher unemployment, falling remittances - which many poor people rely on to buy food - and a drop in credit to support agricultural trade. "We are in a very unstable situation," he is quoted as saying.

The double whammy of the food and economic crises has reversed progress in reducing the proportion of the developing world's population who are undernourished. According to the FT, the figure dropped from 20 percent in the early 1990s to 16 percent from 2003-2005, but has now risen again to almost 18 percent.

In his interview with the newspaper, Diouf proposed replacing the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015 with a target of "eradicating hunger by 2025".

The FAO chief also warned that rising numbers of hungry people could spark political instability, urging world leaders to remember that food riots erupted in 30 countries last year. "The issue of world food security is an issue of peace and national security," he told the paper.

FOOD SUMMIT?

Earlier this week, the U.N. agency said the heads of Caribbean countries, together with Brazil and Chile, had given their backing to Diouf's proposal for a World Summit on Food Security in November in Rome. The African Union and League of Arab States also support the gathering.

"The Summit should lead to greater coherence in the global governance of world food security," Diouf said in a statement. "It will define how we can improve policies and the structural aspects of the international agricultural system by putting forward lasting political, financial and technical solutions to the problem of food insecurity in the world."

The FAO head has repeatedly called for a new agricultural world order, urging the international community to provide $30 billion annually to improve rural infrastructure and boost agricultural production in developing countries.

"It is only in this way that we will succeed to eradicate hunger and feed a world population that will reach 9 billion in 2050," he said.

Diouf will speak at an Asia-Pacific FAO conference in Bangkok on Monday, focusing on volatile food prices and market uncertainties.

This month, the FAO launched a tool that allows users to track staple food prices on national markets in 55 developing countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Senior economist Liliana Balbi told AlertNet food prices may have dropped on international markets, but the database shows they have fallen much more slowly in poor countries, if at all.

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