The skyrocketing cost of food staples caused by  rising fuel prices, unpredictable weather conditions due climate change and demand from developing nations  threaten to plunge millions back into poverty and reverse progress a phenomenon that is being described as ''silent tsunami'' 

A tsunami is defined as a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. This happens in case of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, and can have a devastating impact on people living near the shorelines. But the new tsunami brewing will not only affect the people in the coastal regions, but elsewhere as well. For this is a tsunami not of water, but of hunger.

That is how Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme (WFP) described the current food crisis, a ''silent tsunami'' which threatened to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger. She was speaking on the occasion of a global conference of experts called by British prime minister Gordon Brown to discuss the issue.

"This is the new face of hunger - the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she said ahead of the meeting. The price of rice has more than doubled in the last five weeks, she said. The World Bank estimates food prices have risen by 83 per cent in three years. "What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent," Sheeran told a news conference.

Brown said the spiraling prices threaten to plunge millions back into poverty and reverse progress on alleviating misery in the developing world. "Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations," he said.

The skyrocketing cost of food staples, stoked by rising fuel prices, unpredictable weather and demand from developing nations, has already sparked sometimes violent protests across the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

Rice from Thailand, the world's top exporter, has more than doubled in price this year. Major food exporters including Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Cambodia have imposed curbs on food exports to secure supplies. India has also banned the export of non-basmati rice.

Malaysia's embattled prime minister is already under pressure over the price increases and has launched a major rice-growing project. Unrest over the food crisis has led to deaths in Cameroon and Haiti, cost Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job, and caused hungry textile workers to clash with police in Bangladesh.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said more protests in other developing nations appear likely. "We are going through a very serious crisis and we are going to see lots of food strikes and demonstrations," Annan told reporters in Geneva. His successor, Ban Ki-moon, has said dearer food risked wiping out progress on the goal of cutting world poverty in half by 2015.

Rising prices meant the WFP was running short of money to buy food for its programmes and had already curtailed school feeding plans in Tajikistan, Kenya and Cambodia. Sheeran said that the 2008 estimate of $2.9 billion for the WFP's budget would now need to be increased by 25 per cent to cope with the current situation.

She said developing world governments, particularly in Africa, would need to dedicate at least 10 per cent of future budgets to agriculture to boost global production.

The production of biofuels also needs to be urgently re-examined, Brown said. Production of biofuel leads to the destruction of forests and takes up land available to grow crops for food. "If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets," he said a day after the EU stood by its target of getting a tenth of road transport fuel from crops and agricultural waste by 2020.

Some of the richer nations have come forward to alleviate this problem of rising prices and lessening food stocks. While the US has released $200 million in urgent aid, Britain pledged an immediate $59.7 million on Tuesday and an additional $900 million in long-term support to the WFP.