Global hunger prods nations

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China next week is doubling taxes on fertilizer exports to ensure supplies for domestic farmers. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the army to start baking bread after deadly riots broke out in lines people waiting for food. Oil-rich Libya is discussing a deal to essentially rent a chunk of land-rich Ukraine on which it can grow its own wheat.

With food and fuel prices soaring, the world's haves and have-nots are not waiting for the free market or global institutions such as the World Bank to make sure their people have enough to eat.

"A lot of countries are in trouble right now," said Lester Brown, veteran environmentalist and president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute. "We're seeing various efforts made by countries to ensure they have the food inputs they need."

Soaring prices for wheat, rice, corn, palm oils and other staples have sparked food riots and reports of hoarding on four continents. Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was forced to step down last week because of violence linked to higher food costs, and U.N. and World Bank officials warn that more unrest is likely.

International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the global food crisis could potentially spark resource wars and destabilize even established democracies around the world.

"History is full of wars that started because of this kind of problem," he said in an interview with a French radio station.

World Food Program head Josette Sheeran blames the surge in food prices on a "perfect storm" of factors: drought in key producing nations such as Australia; massive fuel price increases that make transporting food more expensive; competition for cropland from biofuels; and a surge in demand as hundreds of millions move into the middle class in China, India and other developing countries.

A World Bank study estimates that it will take at least three years to address imbalances in world agricultural markets, but governments must feed hungry, growing populations immediately.

"It's a crisis that has to be a much higher immediate priority for the world than it has been," said Kimberly Cadena, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign. The global poverty advocacy group recommends that the food crisis be the top priority at the Group of Eight summit this summer.

Governments aren't waiting that long.