http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/04/23/haiti_wideweb__470x313,0.jpgHelping hand … students in Haiti rely on aid programs for their school lunch.
Photo: AFP
Jeremy Lovell in London
April 24, 2008
A "SILENT tsunami" unleashed by costlier food is threatening 100million people, the United Nations has warned, revealing that its World Food Program has begun cutting the provision of school meals to some of the world's poorest children as the global food-price crisis worsens.
Aid bodies said there was enough food to go round but the key was to help the poor afford it, and urged producing nations not to curb exports to stockpile food at home.
In London, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said Britain would seek changes to EU biofuels targets if it was shown that planting crops for fuel was driving up food prices - a day after the bloc stood by its plans to boost biofuel use.
Britain has also pledged $US900million ($947 million) to help the UN World Food Program alleviate its immediate problems and address longer-term solutions to "help put food on the table for nearly a billion people going hungry across the world".
In a meeting of experts which Mr Brown called on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, the head of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, said a "silent tsunami" threatened to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.
"This is the new face of hunger; the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she said.
...
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/un-cuts-school-childrens-meals/2008/04/23/1208743039992.html