Rich countries must increase their aid to agriculture by 10 times to $30bn a year to help resolve the global food crisis, the United Nations’ top agriculture official reckons.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that for the first time in 25 years record prices were providing the fundamental economic and political incentives to stimulate investments in the agricultural sector.

“The only way out of the crisis is to increase food production, in particular in poor countries,” he said.

In advance of this week’s FAO food summit, Mr Diouf told the Financial Times the share of official development aid spending in agriculture needed to increase from the current low of 3 per cent of total development aid to the early 1980s peak of 17 per cent to boost productivity and food output.

Investments, he added, were not only crucial to resolve the current crisis, but also to double global food production by 2050 in order to meet the expected increase in the world’s population from 6bn to 9bn.

The FAO’s food summit in Rome is the first global response to a 71 per cent increase in food prices during the past two years. Food prices have led to riots in countries from Haiti to Egypt and Bangladesh.

At the summit, countries are expected to clash about biofuels policies, use of genetic modified organisms and trade, particularly the imposition of export bans.

“It is touching every country in the world,” Mr Diouf said.

“We have not only seen riots and people dying, but also a government toppled [Haiti], and we know that many countries that are emerging democracies could tilt to one way of the other depending on the discontent or satisfaction of their population.”