Food prices may stabilize at high levels and keep government import bills near a record, increasing the risk of social unrest in the world's least developed countries, the United Nations said.
The UN Food & Agriculture Organization is asking international lenders to accelerate the release of funds to help poor countries cope with high food costs through subsidies and avert riots, Hiroyuki Konuma, assistant director general at the FAO, said in an interview.
Global food costs are about 40 percent above the average in the past 10 years, according to a UN gauge, which tracks 55 commodities. Drought in South America, the biggest soybean- growing region, has wilted harvests, helping the organization's measure of cooking-oil prices advance to the highest level in nine months in April, even as bigger supplies of corn, rice and wheat pushed cereal prices lower.
"This is the danger that we're looking at," Konuma said on May 3. When governments are unable to subsidize food and are forced to pass on higher costs, "then you see the youth riot and you have social unrest," he said.