High global food prices threaten to derail Gordon Brown’s stated commitment to tackle poverty in the poorest nations.

A high-profile meeting at Downing Street yesterday was intended to galvanise international action and to show that Britain is ready to play a key role. The discussions seem likely to lead to a robust package of measures to help developing countries at the G8 summit in Japan in July and a special UN meeting in the autumn.

The Government pledged an extra £455 million in aid to help to tackle the food crisis, which, experts have claimed, will leave more than 100 million people facing hunger.

About £30 million of that figure is destined for the World Food Programme, £25 million to help the poorest people in Ethiopia and the bulk of the cash, £400 million, on agricultural research. Mr Brown is concerned by the shift of cereal production from food into biofuels, which is not only threatening his commitment to help poor nations but is directly contributing to higher food bills at home.

A review of biofuels policy by Britain is expected to lead to pressure on the European Commission to revise future biofuel targets. A new approach is to be finalised for a European Union summit in June. Aid and environmental campaigners, including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth, are delighted by the change of heart in Whitehall. They argue that biofuels will worsen the impact of climate change and are linked to human rights abuses of workers in developing nations and land-grabs from the poor.

Mr Brown wants Britain and other wealthy nations to bring about an agricultural revolution in developing countries. He wants to see poor farmers grow higher-yielding varieties of crop and for more investment in storage units and road networks to ensure that they get to market.

The meeting yesterday included representatives from the World Food Programme and African Development Bank, as well as charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children Fund, and key players in the food chain, Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury’s and Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers’ Union.

There was support for moves to achieve a successful World Trade Organisation deal, including a substanital “aid for trade” package to help to build up the trading capacity of the poorest nations. Britain wants to see the removal of agricultural tariffs and trade distorting subsidies which penalise poor nations in Africa.

Hilary Benn, the Rural Afairs Secretary, also underlined the need for further reform of the Common Agricultural Policy as a means of bringing down food prices on the Continent and to increase the capacity of developing nations to produce and export agricultural commodities.

Mr Brown, in an article on the No 10 website, outlined the scale of the problem facing the world.

“Hunger is a moral challenge to each one of us as global citizens, but it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of poor nations around the world. Riots now threaten democratically elected governments. Going hungry means that poor people are less able to work and make a living, but hunger also stands in the way of our efforts to improve standards in education and to cut child deaths.”

He recognised that an increase in global food prices, at their highest since 1945, had forced up shopping bills in Britain.

But the impact was felt hardest by the world’s poorest countries, where the food crisis threatened to undo progress made in recent years in tackling poverty. He said that about 800 million people were living in poverty in the world and there was a duty for a fully co-ordinated response by the international community.

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