The cheap food era may be over, the president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has warned.

At the ADB's annual meeting in Madrid, Haruhiko Kuroda said that the crisis of rising food prices could reverse gains made in reducing poverty across Asia.

The BBC reports that donor countries have pledged more than US$11 billion to a fund to ease the hardship of Asia's poorest people. However, food prices are the key issue on the minds of the thousands of government officials and business figures who have gathered in Madrid.

ADB president Mr Kuroda said it was critically important to provide financing for development projects in rural Asian areas. He said that progress made in the great effort to lift millions out of poverty could be reversed.

The rising cost of food is helping to fuel inflation, which the bank predicts will rise to more than 5 percent this year - the highest level since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago.

The cost of the benchmark Thai variety of rice is about $1,000 a tonne, three times the cost at the time of the bank's last meeting a year ago. Major rice producers like Vietnam and India are limiting exports to secure domestic supply.

Poor harvests, global warming, increasing demand and the transfer of food land to biofuel production have all been blamed as factors in the crisis.

Asia has two-thirds of the world's poor, with about 1.7 billion people earning US$2 a day or lower.

© NewsRoom 2008