By Lesley Wroughton UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The U.N. World Food Programme, backed by philanthropists Bill Gates and Howard Buffett, said on Wednesday it will buy surplus crops directly from poor farmers in Africa and Central America to feed people facing hunger and starvation. The Purchase for Progress project, launched on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, will help farmers produce more food and sell the surplus to increase their incomes in some of the world's poorest regions, at a time when global food prices are high and more people are going hungry. The project has been backed by $76 million in grant funding from charitable organizations, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Howard Buffett Foundation, son of U.S. investment billionaire Warren Buffett. "The world's poor are reeling under the impact of high food and fuel prices, and buying food assistance from developing world farmers is the right solution at the right time," Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, told a news conference. Sheeran said the Gates and Buffett funding will help study the types of contracts that can help farmers improve their incomes and boost productivity, while also reducing poverty among rural farmers. She said the agency will work with governments, the U.N. and development groups to help farmers deal with supply-side constraints that are critical to increasing production, and work with farmers' associations to reach farmers. "When we are finished these pilots we will then take the lessons we've learned and hopefully change the way we do business to be able to help farmers increase their yields so they will no longer require food assistance," Sheeran said. She said the project will initially be tested in 21 countries including Liberia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Laos. The WFP is the world's single largest purchaser of food for humanitarian operations and spent $612 million in developing countries in 2007, while assisting 86 million people facing starvation. The WFP said it expects to buy 40,000 tonnes of food from about 350,000 small farmers over five years, enough to feed 250,000 people a year. "Developing new ways for WFP to purchase food locally represents a major step toward sustainable change that could eventually benefit millions of poor rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions," said Gates, who is expected to address a high-level U.N. meeting on Thursday on goals to halve global poverty by 2015, including by reducing hunger and poverty. "This is exactly the kind of innovative public-private partnership we need to advance the Millennium Development Goals and address extreme hunger and poverty around the world," said Gates. The majority of the world's poor live in rural areas, and most rely on agriculture for their food and income. Higher global food and fuel costs has increased hunger in developing countries, and a sharp increase in fertilizer prices has cut farm yields. (Editing by David Wiessler)
A woman carries a box of soyabean oil during a food distribution in Buge village, Wolayita region in southern Ethiopia in this picture taken on September 8, 2008 and released by ...
