World Bank calls for 'New Deal' to fight hunger

USA: With skyrocketing food prices critically threatening the world's poor, the World Bank on Wednesday called on the international community to mount a wide-ranging "New Deal" fight against hunger. We need a New Deal for Global Food Policy," World Bank president Robert Zoellick said in a speech to a Washington think tank ahead of next week's spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Referring to a 1930s US government program that tackled the problems of the Great Depression, Zoellick said that the new New Deal for Global Food Policy should start by helping those who are most immediately threatened with malnutrition and starvation. Zoellick, who made agriculture a priority when he took office in July, urged countries to provide the minimum 500 million dollars immediately sought by the World Food Program (WFP) to face the mounting food crisis.

"The United States, the European Union, Japan, and other OECD countries must act now to fill this gap or many more people will suffer and starve," he told the Center for Global Development.

The WFP, a United Nations agency, issued "an extraordinary emergency appeal" to governments on March 20 for money to close a widening funding gap created by soaring food and fuel prices. Without such immediate help, the WFP warned it may have to cut food rations.

Zoellick said that the World Bank "will almost double our own lending for agriculture in Africa, from 450 million to 800 million dollars." Tuesday, AFP