The world could be on the brink of a new food crisis unless urgent action is taken, ActionAid warned today ahead of an emergency UN meeting on world food prices.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) meeting taking place on Friday in Rome was called last month after Russia extended a wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique killing 13 people.

Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid’s hunger campaigner, said: "The emergency UN meeting in Rome is a clear warning sign that we could be on the brink of another food price crisis unless swift action is taken. Already nearly a billion people go to bed hungry every night – another food crisis would be catastrophic for millions of poor people."

Over 150 million more people were pushed into hunger by the last food and financial crisis in 2007-8, which saw prices for rice and wheat rocket by over 100 per cent and food riots in more than thirty countries.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, said this week the last food crisis was largely fuelled by large investments groups – hedge funds, pension funds, investment banks – speculating in a totally deregulated financial framework. Food market experts at the FAO meeting will discuss the outlook for rice, wheat and other grains as well as global proposals to curb volatility in agricultural markets.

Alex Wijeratna said: "Regulators must impose immediate curbs on financial speculation on agricultural markets to prevent a full-blown food price crisis from erupting. Speculators poured $250 billion of largely ‘hot money’ into commodity speculation funds in 2008, which experts say exacerbated the last global food crisis. This has to stop, because the poorest cannot afford another food price crisis."

An ActionAid report released last week revealed that hunger could be costing poor nations $450 billion a year - more than ten times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015 and meet Millennium Development Goal One. ActionAid’s report Who’s really fighting hunger? which shows the real dates countries will meet MDG1 and scores nations on their efforts to fight hunger, was released as world leaders met at the UN in New York earlier this week to discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals. World leaders recommitted to achieving MDG1 by 2015, but the threat of another food crisis could jeopardise this.