More than 40 million people in poor countries were ''dragged into hunger'' and poverty this year by rising food prices, climate change and higher costs of agricultural crop seed, the United Nations says.
In its latest report on world food shortages, the UN says the number of people worldwide affected by chronic food shortages rose to 963million in 2008, up from 923million the previous year.
The director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, former Senegalese diplomat Jacques Diouf, has appealed to world leaders to bankroll an ''agricultural revival'' by pledging $US30 billion ($A44 billion) a year to eradicate hunger within six years.
''We must revisit the way we do business. We must correct the international system which results in hunger and poverty,'' he said.
Dr Diouf said the ''sad reality'' of a continuing rise in world hunger ''should not be acceptable at the dawn of the 21st century, at a time when our efforts are focused on liberty and human rights''.
Those most affected were ''the poorest, landless and female-headed households,'' he said. The rising costs of crop seeds and fertilisers were also making it impossible for farmers in developing countries to earn a living or to feed their families and local communities.
More than 60 per cent of people affected by the worsening global food crisis live in only seven countries Indonesia, India, China, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, coupled with high food prices, have more than doubled the number of people in Middle Eastern regions affected by chronic food shortages, according to UN estimates. Numbers have risen from 15 million in the early 1990s to more than 37million.
In its latest report on world crop prospects, the Food and Agriculture Organisation says severe drought has reduced reduced domestic agricultural production by 40 per cent in Afghanistan, with the country facing a shortfall of 2.3million tonnes of food next year.
But UN experts say Afghanistan has vast areas of arable land, fertile soils and plentiful water and could become a future food exporter if developed nations invested generously in agricultural development.
Assistant director-general of the UN's food and agriculture agency Hafez Ghanem said, ''For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices, remain a dire reality.''
If the impacts of the global economic crisis force farmers in developing countries to plant less food, ''another round of dramatic food prices could be unleashed next year''.
The UN report estimates sub-Saharan Africa has the world's highest proportion of starving or malnourished people, with one in three people or 236 million suffering chronic hunger. Most of this increase has occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as a result of civil war.
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