By 2050, the world will need 70% more food, the World Bank believes.
FORBES: Highly Leveraged Agriculture Will Keep Food Prices Volatile And High
The World Bank says food prices are at "dangerous levels" and have pushed 44 million more people into poverty since last June.
Sartaj Aziz, who served as finance minister and foreign minister under Nawaz Sharif, once worked as an economist at the World Bank and the Food and Agricultural Organization.
The authors offer a number of sensible remedies to such ills, including different ways of boosting investment in public agricultural research and possible reforms at multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
ECONOMIST: We grow enough food. So why do so many still go hungry?
According to Moody's, the average increase in the World Bank's commodity food price index for emerging countries was 3% year-over-year in the past 12 months, when India's index of wholesale food prices rose 10%.
As the World Bank points out, global food production will have to rise by about 70% between now and 2050 to feed 9 billion.
According to the World Bank, biotech crops could increase food production in the developing world by 25%.
"The World Bank estimates around half of all food that reaches the final market in Egypt is spoiled, " says Blair.
United Nations and World Bank officials talk of a new deal for food aid.
Analysts from the OECD to the World Bank argue that biofuel demand is the biggest single reason why food prices have soared in the past couple of years, accounting for as much as 70% of the rise in maize prices and 40% of the rise in soyabean prices.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick has urged swift action, saying that surging food prices could push a hundred million low-income people into desperate poverty.
"There has been a lot of talk about food prices at the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the general feeling is we are not in the same situation we were in in 2008, " says Marc Sadler, senior agriculture economist at the World Bank.
Some 40% of official British aid goes through the UN, the World Bank and 30-odd other multilateral organisations, with agencies such as UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organisation seen as particularly feeble.
Meanwhile, Lee is joining with fellow food celebrities Emeril Lagasse, Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay and Martha Stewart to host her second World's Largest Bake Sale on May 1, an event that raises money for the New York food bank.
Over three-years, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme (IHP), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) and the World Bank are working closely with Member States to, though their best practices, jointly understand the complex nexus between science and governance in the management of groundwater resources.
Global food prices surged toward the end of 2010, pushing 44 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.
FORBES: Highly Leveraged Agriculture Will Keep Food Prices Volatile And High
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