With rice prices rising by more than 90 percent in the past year, the United Nations is setting up a task force to tackle the global food crisis.

The task force, chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, will be composed of the heads of UN agencies and the World Bank.

"We have agreed to establish a UN task force on the global food prices that I'll chair and we bring together the heads of the specialized agencies and institutions into effective and coordinative mechanism."

Ban Ki-moon calls upon international community especially developed countries to make more money available now.

"We have agreed on a series of concrete measures that need to be taken, the short, the medium and the long terms. The CEB calls upon the international community and in particular developed countries to urgently and fully fund the emergency requirement of 755 million dollars for the world food program and honor outstanding pledges,"

The UN chief says it is essential to support farmers in poor countries. He says in addition to increasing food prices, farmers in developing countries are planting less, producing less, due to the escalating cost of fertilizer and energy.

"The second but also urgent priority is that we must ensure food for tomorrow. We must make every effort to support those farmers so that in the coming year we do not see even more severe food shortages."

The UN will reportedly offer 200 million dollars to farmers in the worst affected countries to boost food production, in the medium term, and it is calling for a further 1.7 billion dollars to help countries with a food deficit to buy seeds.