To help farmers and consumers mitigate the negative effects of rising food and input prices, the UN body Food and Agriculture Organisation has launched a series of projects worth 21 million dollar in 48 countries, excluding India.

The projects, which are part of FAO's Initiative on Soaring Food Prices, 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.

FAO experts, however, said that increased food production would help cushion small farmers by increasing their income and also facilitating the access of food to rural and urban population.

On rising prices, they said that the unprecedented hike in food prices, which rose 52 per cent between 2007 and 2008, have had severe economic, social and political consequences in poor countries.

Besides, high prices of farm inputs have become a major obstacle to developing countries' efforts to increase agricultural production.

For the period January 2007 to April 2008, fertiliser prices in particular shot up at a much faster rate than food prices, they added.

Already, six countries -- Burkina Faso, Cte dIvoire, Haiti, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal -- are benefiting from these projects, FAO added.

• Inflation, the silent killer!