The FAO says low-income countries will have to spend forty per cent more on food imports this year than they did last year.

The talks in Caracas, Venezuela, marked the beginning of a week of meetings on the issue, leading up to Tuesday's start of a three-day UN food crisis summit in Rome.

According to the World Bank, global food prices have risen by 83% over the past three years.

In Rome, Caribbean leaders from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Vincent and the Grenadines were due to join other heads of state or government.

UN summit sets food price challenges

An influential report last Thursday warned that higher food prices might be here to stay as demand from developing countries and production costs rose.

Prices would fall, but only gradually, the report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said.

Food grants

	Haitians had been hardest hit by rising food prices in the Caribbean

Haiti's political fall-out has been the most high-profile.

Food riots led to the sacking of prime minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.

Since then, the World Bank has announced increasingly large donations to help feed Haitians.

The BBC's James Ingham, in the Venezuelan capital, says that like much of the rest of the developing world, Latin America's poor have not escaped from the increased food prices.

While some countries are working together to tackle the crisis, there has been no united response and the meeting will aim to correct that, he says.

At a recent summit held with European leaders, American heads of state pledged to strengthen trade relations.

However, an alternative "people's summit" held by social movements said liberalisation and deregulation were the principal causes of poverty.

Some of the region's left-wing governments share that view and are focusing on reducing their reliance on imports, creating an agricultural development fund to help achieve this.

In preparation for the UN-sponsored food crisis summit in Rome next week, the World Bank said there was "the need for a clear action plan".

As part of its package it is setting aside grants worth a total of $200m for "high-priority" countries most at risk from acute hunger.

The World Bank says 100 million people could be impoverished by the rising cost and scarcer availability of food.

Fuel protests

Thursday's joint report by the UN and OECD believes the current price spike is higher than previous records, partly due to bad weather ruining crops.

But factors such as rising biofuel demand and speculation will keep future costs high, it adds.

Fuel prices have also been rising dramatically and the European Union braced for fresh strikes by fishermen on Friday.

Trade unions say the cost of diesel oil has become prohibitively high and that many fishermen are being forced to give up a lifelong profession.