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World Vision International, which provides food relief in 35 countries, said it can no longer provide rations to 1.5 million of the poor people it fed last year because of soaring costs and unmet donor aid commitments.
'Despite our best efforts, more than a million of our beneficiaries are no longer receiving food aid,' World Vision President Dean Hirsch said in a statement on Tuesday. 'Around 572,000 of these are children who urgently need enough healthy food to thrive.'
The price of rice, the staple for half the world, jumped to a record of $24.745 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade on Wednesday, said a Bloomberg report. The 'pricing crisis' may take at least two years to stabilize, pushing an estimated 100 million people deeper into poverty, including 10 million children younger than 5 who rely on adequate nutrition to develop properly, Los Angeles-based World Vision said.
'If the international community does not act swiftly, then not only will rising food prices undermine the poverty gains of the last 5 to 10 years, but they will ultimately put a brake on developing countries' chances for any real future development through its youngest citizens,' said Walter Middleton, vice president of World Vision's food programming and management group, in the statement.
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