FAO to help fight inflation; India not included

The projects, which are part of FAO's Initiative on Soaring Food Prices (ISFP), aims to help vulnerable countries to boost food supplies by ensuring the success of their agricultural campaigns and to provide policy support to improve access to food, FAO said on its website.     

Under these projects, FAO's ISFP plans to provide farmers with farm inputs for a period of one year to 48 countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen and Zambia, it said.     

The immediate objective is to ensure the success of the next planting seasons and, in the longer term, demonstrate that by increasing the supply of key agricultural inputs, such as seeds and fertilisers, help small farmers to rapidly increase their food production, it said.     

According to FAO, countries most affected, especially in Africa, will need at least a total of $ 1.7 billion to start reviving agricultural systems that have been neglected for several decades. And this amount is just for immediate and short-term measures during 2008-2009.