Stubbornly high food prices threaten worse hunger

By Robin Pomeroy and Brian Love

ROME/PARIS (Reuters) - High food prices are here to stay for the foreseeable future, potentially forcing millions more people into hunger, two reports from the United Nations and the OECD showed on Thursday.

A surge in commodity prices in the last year was not a blip and prices will remain at or above current levels for at least the next decade as some of the main underpinning factors -- demand for a richer diet, the rise of biofuels and high oil prices -- will remain, one of the reports said.

"Food is no longer the cheap commodity that it once was," said Hafez Ghanem, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"Rising food prices are bound to worsen the already unacceptable level of food deprivation suffered by 854 million people. We are facing the risk that the number of hungry will increase by many more millions of people," he said.

In a 10-year look-ahead at likely food price scenarios, to be published next week, the FAO and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development saw no return to pre-crisis levels.

"On average over the coming 10-year period, nominal prices for cereals, rice and oilseeds are expected to be 35 percent to 65 percent higher than on average in the past 10 years," said a summary of the Agricultural Outlook report seen by Reuters.

"Prices in real terms are projected to be 10 percent to 35 percent higher than in the past decade."

Even a bumper harvest expected this year will do little to ease the plight of the world's poor, FAO said in its twice-yearly Food Outlook which gives short-term estimates.  Continued...