At the summit, ActionAid policy expert Meredith Alexander said the expected announcement around commitments of US$15bn over three years to deal with the global crisis in food and agriculture was welcome as a first step.

But she added that more aid was urgently required to help the billion people living with chronic hunger every day. Alexander also charged that G8 leaders were dodging the harder questions of biofuels and land grabs.

ActionAid is particularly concerned about the rising numbers of people living with hunger, the agriculture systems that support them and the impact of biofuels and land grabbing as climate change begins to bite and richer countries start to shore up their food supplies.

Alexander said: “The G8 must recognise the impact rising prices will have on hunger. Higher oil prices bring more crops like corn into biofuel production, putting fuel in cars rather than food on plates.

“Land grabbing takes farmland from poor communities and food from the hungry. The G8’s plan to just start discussing it as a topic is insufficient.

"The charity is calling on the EU and US to end all biofuel subsidies and targets to stop higher prices leading to higher numbers of people going hungry.

 “We have already seen the land issue being one of the factors that helped to topple Madagascar’s government. The implications around biofuels and land grabbing are of huge importance and must be urgently addressed,” Alexander concluded.