Smash hit

Mr Zoellick criticised a lack of urgency at the highest political levels in tackling the issue, which has provoked rioting in Haiti in which a UN peacekeeper and four other people died.

Gordon Brown has promised to raise the issue of skyrocketing food prices at the next meeting of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, but Mr Zoellick said that that would be too late.

“Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait,” he told a news conference, calling on governments to honour their promises to provide the UN World Food Programme with $500 million (£255 million) in emergency aid by May 1.

“It is critical that governments confirm their commitments as soon as possible and others begin to commit,” the World Bank president added.

"Prices have only risen further since the WFP issued that appeal, so it is urgent that governments step up."

The Prime Minister of Haiti has been deposed after a week of food-related rioting. There have also been protests in Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Rice prices have shot up 75 per cent in the past two months alone to reach historic highs. The cost of wheat has climbed by 120 per cent over the past year, more than doubling the price of bread in most poor countries.

In developing countries, where food represents a larger share of what consumers buy, the problem threatens to increase malnutrition and hunger, and to reverse progress in reducing poverty and international debt.

The president of the World Bank has called for immediate action to deal with rapidly rising food prices that have caused hunger and deadly violence and threatened the economic stability of the world's poorest countries.

A doubling of food prices over the last two years was potentially pushing 100 million people deeper into long-term poverty, said Robert Zoellick.

“We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that,” Mr Zoellick said after a meeting of the IMF and World Bank’s Development Committee yesterday.

"This is not just a question about short-term needs, as important as those are. This is about ensuring that future generations don't pay a price too."

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