UK's Brown: Food crisis is new credit crunch

(CNN) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday that rising food prices pose as great a threat to world prosperity as the global credit crunch, warning that spiraling prices threaten to reverse progress made to alleviate poverty in the developing world.

The British leader, who is meeting in London with World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeran, development charities and farmers, said urgent action to stimulate food production is needed, including a review of the impact of biofuels on global agriculture.

Rising food prices, stoked by increased fuel costs, have led to the world's first major food crisis since World War II and sparked protests across the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

"Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations," Brown said, in a statement released Tuesday ahead of the meeting in London.

In Bangladesh, thousands of textile workers have clashed with police in protests over shortages, and in Haiti widespread riots have led to several deaths.

Brown said he fears the use of agricultural land to produce biofuels -- intended to help tackle climate change -- may be a key factor in driving up prices.

Many officials claim shortages are being exacerbated by poor harvests caused by unpredictable weather and because of increased demand from emerging economies like China and India.

"Biofuels, intended to promote energy independence and combat climate change, we now know are frequently energy-inefficient," Brown said.

Britain introduced targets this month aimed at producing 5 percent of transport fuel from biofuels by 2010, but Brown said Tuesday that his government will now review the policy.

Rajat Nag, head of the Asian Development Bank, said on Monday that governments across the world should question their use of agricultural subsidies to encourage biofuel production.

Production of biofuel leads to forests being destroyed and reduces the land area available for growing crops for food, Nag said. Paying farmers to grow oilseed and other crops to produce biofuels means they grow fewer food crops, resulting in higher prices for staples such as palm oil and corn.

Sheeran, who is also addressing British lawmakers in a separate session, has called on 20 heads of government to offer emergency funding to help poorer countries offset the rising costs of producing, or importing, food.

"The response calls for large-scale, high level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions," Sheeran said in a statement Tuesday. "What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent, destroying even more livelihoods and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime."

The World Food Program has warned that, without increased funding, some of the world's poorest nations will miss out on emergency food aid this year.

World Bank head Robert Zoellick has said as many as 100 million people could be plunged deeper into poverty by the crisis. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said rising prices threaten to cancel out progress made toward meeting the goal of halving world poverty by 2015.

Brown said he hopes to use London talks to discuss a new aid-for-trade deal to encourage farmers in the developing world to increase food production. E-mail to a friend

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