Haitian women banking on a food distribution centre

Regional states are being urged to, along with the rest of the world, produce much more than they are doing at the moment.

A new report is warning that the world will have to increase food production by at least 50% by the middle of the century.

Britain's academy of sciences, the Royal Society, says that by the middle of the century the global population may reach 9 billion.

It says feeding those extra mouths is a major challenge for the planet, compounded by the spectre of global warming.

FAO wants food production increased

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation said earlier this month that the world will have to increase food output by 70% and invest $83 billion annually in developing countries by mid-century.

A combination of changing diets, growing population, demand for farmland for biofuels and high energy prices have stoked food prices and renewed interest in agriculture.

	Dr Gonsalves questions the cost of locally produced bananas

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves is among those worried by prices in local markets:

"I really can't understand how ripe bananas in Kingstown Market are more expensive than in the supermarkets in London," the prime minister said in reference to the fact that the fruit is produced locally.

Food import bill worries

Dr Gonsalves said that his country's food bill last year was almost EC$200 million (about US$70 million).

He said a Taiwanese back-programme of agricultural diversification was bearing fruit, with St Vincent now self-sufficient in pork production as one example of progress.

In Barbados, the government said this week it was considering establishing its own bulk import agency to try to bring down the cost of imported food.

Caricom's total import food import bill has been put at more than US$3.5 billion.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Program complained on Monday that most of the developing world is paying more for food despite drops in commodity market prices during the global economic slowdown.

Double hike

Speaking in Australia, the agency's executive director Josette Sheeran blamed climate change, escalating fuel costs and falling incomes.

She said the number of "urgently hungry" had now reached its highest ever - 1.02 billion.

"The food crisis is not over. We have an anomaly happening where on global, big markets, the prices are down, but for 80% of commodities in the developing world, prices are higher today than they were a year ago, and the prices a year ago were double what they were the year before that,» she said.

"What it means is for about 80 percent of the developing world, people can afford one third as much food today as they could two or three years ago," she said.

The WFP head said there had been a fourfold increase in the number of natural disasters in the past 20 years.

"All we know is that the world is facing increasingly frequent and ferocious natural disasters and the most vulnerable people and nations are getting hit hard and we better prepare now," she said.