UN chief warns of food crisis
The U.N. chief warned Sunday that the world must urgently increase food production to ease skyrocketing prices and pledged to set up a task force on a crisis threatening to destabilize developing nations.
The cost of food has increased by around 40 percent since mid-2007 worldwide, and the strain has caused riots and protests in such countries as Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Haiti and Egypt.
"We must make no mistake, the problem is big. If we offer the right aid, the solutions will come," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the opening of a five-day U.N. conference on trade and development in Ghana’s capital, Accra.
