No food price relief seen for poor Afghans

KABUL (Reuters) - Impoverished Afghans struggling withrising wheat prices are not expected to get any relief soonwith no sign prices are going to come down, a United Nationsofficial said on Monday.

Top finance and development officials from around the worldcalled in Washington on Sunday for urgent action to stem risingfood prices, warning that social unrest will spread unless thecost of basic staples is contained.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries withhalf its 25 million people living below the poverty line.

Wheat prices in Afghanistan have risen by an average of 60percent over the last year with certain areas seeing a rise ofup to 80 percent, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said.

"Very few people, I think, would believe that the factors... that pushed the price of wheat up to record highs in theearly part of this year are going to disappear," Rick Corsino,director for the WFP in Afghanistan, told a news conference.

"No one believes, for example, that we're going to go backto price levels that we saw 12 months or 18 months ago," hesaid.

"What this means, of course, is that those people that aremost affected by the higher prices are unlikely to get too muchrelief."

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said earlythis year wheat imports had become too expensive forAfghanistan after grain prices rallied on international marketslast year.

The FAO estimated Afghanistan's total wheat import needs in2007/08 at 550,000 tonnes, including 100,000 tonnes of foodaid.

The FAO said it has tentatively estimated Afghanistan'stotal output of cereals in 2007 at more than 4.6 million tonnes-- above average and well above the relatively poor harvest of2006 when it came in at 3.9 million tonnes.

But Corsino said there was concern this year's wheatharvest might not be as good as last year's after low snowfalland light rain early in the year.

At Sunday's meeting in Washington, World Bank PresidentRobert Zoellick said the world was facing a stark reality.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so thatwe can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that,"Zoellick said at the end of a meeting of the IMF and WorldBank's Development Committee.

Zoellick and Prime Minister Gordon Brown have said theissue of skyrocketing food prices needs to be front and centreat the highest political levels.

Anger over high food prices has led to rioting in Haiti.There have also been protests in Cameroon, Niger and BurkinaFaso in Africa, and in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Corsino, asked if higher wheat prices would provide anincentive for farmers to switch from growing opium to wheat,said the profit from opium was still much higher than that fromwheat.

"The problem as I see it, is that the incentive for thoseengaged in poppy have been so much higher than those engaged inwheat that there would have to be quite a long way to go tobridge that gap," he said.

Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of opium, theraw material for heroin.

(Editing by Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)