Mumbai: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for urgent measures to raise global food production to ease skyrocketing world food prices that could destabilise developing nations, particularly in Africa.

The strain of rising food prices, which have increased by around 40 per cent worldwide, has caused riots and protests in countries like Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Haiti and Egypt.

''We must make no mistake, the problem is big. If we offer the right aid, the solutions will come,'' Ban said at the opening of a five-day UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Ghana's capital.

''One thing is certain, the world has consumed more than it has produced,'' over the last three years, he said.

He said he would set up a special task force to help deal with the issue and called for international action. The UN World Food Programme, he said, plans to raise $750 million per year to help feed 73 million people in 80 countries.

Governments, Ban said, has failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals of reducing global poverty and improving living standards of the world's bottom billion people and the world risked losing the progress it has made since the goals were adopted in 2000 to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

''We need to redouble efforts or betray the promises that we made to our people,'' Ban said.

Ban is due to travel this week to Liberia, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

More than 3,000 delegates from 193 nations are expected to attend the 12th session of the UNCTAD, which is being held against a backdrop of rising food prices and an economic slowdown.