Paris: Global food prices will fall from record peaks in the next few years, but the cost of feeding the family will still be far higher than in the past decade, an international study forecast today.

The price bubble has added to the number of people in extreme hunger and some humanitarian aid is "urgently required," the OECD said in a joint survey with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

But they warned that food subsidies and trade protection are not the answer, saying that high prices might even be part of the solution by stimulating neglected investment in agriculture in poor countries.

Raising food supplies in poor countries also depended on raising the quality of government and improving policies in fields from infrastructure to property rights, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the FAO said.

The survey also warned that the price surge had endangered the UN Millennium Development Goal of eradicating hunger, and it was strongly skeptical about the benefits of agriculture-based biofuels.

However, the "transitory nature" of some of the factors behind the recent trend meant that prices would fall from record peaks.

The report pointed to "adverse weather conditions in major grain-producing regions of the world, with spill-over effects on crops and livestock that compete for the same land."

Source : PTI