UN food aid in crisis

The United Nations issued a warning yesterday that it couldn't afford to maintain its World Food Programme (WFP) beyond the next few months due to the recent sharp rises in food commodity prices. Josette Sheeran, the head of the WFP, said "we will have a significant gap if commodity prices remain this high, and we will need an extra half billion dollars just to meet existing assessed needs." The crisis comes when the UN's programmes are already overstretched - the WFP feeds 73m people in 78 countries from a budget of just $2.9bn for 2008.