Arab donors buy the limelight at the Rome food summit.

The Islamic Development Bank has raised $1.5bn to help the poorest countries cope with the savage current global rise in the price of food.

Separately, Saudi Arabia alone has donated $500m and Kuwait $100m. The UAE has announced the establishment of an advanced regional research and development centre under international auspices to study the causes and seek solutions to the emergency.

Other major contributors to a UN drive to alleviate hunger, launched at a world food summit conference held in Rome during June, included France ($1.5bn), the World Bank ($1.2bn), the African Development Bank ($lbn), Spain ($773m) and Britain ($590m). The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) announced a $1.2bn emergency scheme to provide sustenance for people in the 60 most affected countries, financed in part by the Saudi donation.

The conference was attended by more than 180 countries, including more than 40 heads of state or government. They were responding to the highest agricultural commodity prices in 30 years generating real hunger affecting perhaps 100m people and causing serious disturbances in the Middle East and elsewhere. Wheat prices have soared by 130% since March 2007 and all food prices combined by 83% since 2005.

Analysts attending the Rome conference projected an eventual solution through substantial investment in agricultural development and training as well as basic policy and market reforms. These would include a review of bio-fuel production and an end to national export restrictions and western farm subsidies. Practical negotiations on these and related issues have already begun at the subsequent summit conference of the Group of Eight top industrial countries held during July in Japan.

The announcement of the donation by the Islamic Development Bank attracted expressions of widespread admiration at the Rome summit. The money is intended specifically to assist poor farmers to grow enough food for themselves in the coming planting seasons, and to promote long-term food security through agricultural research.

The Saudi donation has enabled the WFP to launch a special spending programme to compensate for the rising cost of food and fuel. The organisation cares for 73m people in 78 countries.

Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad, the UAE minister for water and the environment, signed an accord with the FAO during the Rome summit for the establishment of a research and development facility to enhance crop yields in the Gulf states and beyond. The regional centre will comprise a multidisciplinary team of international experts in agricultural policy, land and water management, fisheries, plant production and protection, animal health and agricultural investment.

Under the agreement, the UAE government will make an annual contribution of $2m to ensure the smooth functioning of the centre and the availability of adequate expertise to respond to the need for technical assistance in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen.

Similar facilities may soon be opened elsewhere in the Arab world. Over the medium and long term, the UN intends to promote a shift to public as well as private agricultural investment in the developing countries to improve rural infrastructure and allow small farmers to benefit from market opportunities. This will be accompanied by institutional capacity building including research and training to ensure the sustainability of agricultural development.

Entering the bio-fuels argument, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, called for sweeping global agricultural and energy market reforms to prevent the utilisation of food crops for energy production. Mubarak, who had recently faced passionate food riots at home, argued at the conference that in a hungry world grains fit for human consumption should not be wasted on the bio-fuel industry.

Instead, he proposed to restrict the industry to the use of agricultural wastes and non-food crops as raw materials.

Both Britain and France called for a global review of bio-fuel policies in the light of the food shortages. Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur for food, even described bio-fuel production as "a crime against humanity" for its role in raising prices. A World Bank specialist reckons that the fledgling bio-fuel industry of the West already accounts for more than half the current rise in the price of agricultural commodities.

Many at the conference also criticised members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)--the "rich men's club"--for distorting the world commodity markets. The rich countries last year spent $372bn on domestic farm subsidies, effectively undermining producers in the developing regions.

Douglas Alexander, the British minister responsible for international development, declared: "It is unacceptable that rich countries still subsidise farming by more than $1bn a day--costing poor farmers in developing countries an estimated $100bn a year in lost income."

Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, recommended the suspension of all trade barriers recently raised in the Middle East and elsewhere by countries seeking to protect their domestic food supplies. Such policies contribute to rising prices, he argued at a news conference in Rome.

He issued "an international call for the removal of export bans and restrictions". Instead, he sought to deal with the crisis through the urgent provision of ample seeds and fertilisers for farmers in time for the current planting season.

Similar policy proposals have been advanced by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development operating in the newly independent republics of former Soviet Central Asia. Financial institutions are also concerned with the adverse effect on agricultural price movements caused by the weak dollar and the recently increased speculative activity of investment funds on commodity futures markets.

The FAO's latest agricultural market analysis for 2008 projects another 26% increase in the global cost of food imports to $1,035bn. The most economically vulnerable regions are set to bear the highest cost burden. World wheat production is expected to increase by 8.7% to a record 658m tonnes--but crop yields in the Middle East may well decline significantly.

Higher imports are anticipated for Iran, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Output is expected to fall by 2m tonnes in Iran. A significant decline in crop yields is also expected in Kazakhstan after last year's excellent crop. Production is likely to drop slightly in Pakistan because of dry weather conditions affecting regions east and south of the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan has responded to the crisis by banning farm exports until September 2009.

Wheat crop prospects are satisfactory for Egypt, the major producer of the North African region, and Morocco, which is expected to recover from last year's severe drought. But Egypt is again expected to make large purchases in the new season in order to bring down domestic prices after introducing significant increases in wheat flour subsidies and banning certain cereal exports. Morocco may also need large import deliveries to replenish stocks.

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Imports are also expected to increase substantially in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. Wheat stocks are dangerously low in Egypt and Sudan as well as Syria.

The Arab world has attracted some of the major international assistance programmes mounted to alleviate the worst effects of the food crisis, says Ms Sheeran, who last year became the eleventh executive director of the WFP.

In Syria, the organisation has scaled up its efforts to distribute food assistance to tens of thousands of refugees from Iraq. "The Syrian people have generously embraced nearly 1.5m Iraqis in their midst," she declared after a recent visit to Damascus. "Donors have been supportive too. But more Iraqi women, children and men there are unable to meet their basic food needs, and the social support systems in Syria are being overstretched."

In Egypt, the WFP is helping some 396,000 people, especially women and children, mostly through projects to reclaim land and provide housing and education facilities in the poorest parts of the country--mainly Upper Egypt, Sinai and by the Red Sea. It is responsible for the survival of some 600,000 Somalis, dumped along the roads without sanitation and shelter, who have become homeless in prolonged violence during the past year, their plight exacerbated by drought. It is facing an agricultural disaster in war-torn Afghanistan following an unusually severe winter.

Earlier this year, the WFP launched an extraordinary $755m appeal to face the challenge of the global food price crisis, attracting donations of $460m from 31 countries. The half billion dollar gift from Saudi Arabia "rounds out the appeal", says Sheeran, "and leaves extra funds available for other urgent hunger needs.

"The Saudi donation will save many people from dying, others from slipping into malnutrition and disease, and will even help to stave off civil unrest. It puts the Arab oil power at the forefront of large-scale, high-level, multilateral humanitarian action mounted by the global community."

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general who was present at both summit conferences, reckons that up to $20bn a year would be needed to combat hunger and up to $30bn to reach a workable permanent solution. Factors contributing to the price inflation include the effects of climate change and the scarcity of oil. But the biggest practical challenge may be to persuade governments to change their policies.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the host of the Rome conference, estimates that global food production should double by 2050 in order to eliminate mass undernourishment and meet growing demands.