Foresight and better planning could have avoided the serious food crisis that the world, especially the developing countries, is now facing, senior United Nations experts have said.

Lack of investment in agriculture over a long period of time and the use of precious natural resources for bio-fuel production have also contributed to the current crisis, they told reporters in New York on Tuesday.

Kathleen Abdalla of the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) said in a news conference in New York that while populations have grown and diets have changed, "we've had a lack of investment in agriculture for quite a long time now and a lack of aid for agriculture".

"Certainly agriculture has not been a high priority for development assistance and basically the productivity growth hasn't kept pace with the increase in demand," she said.

Aslam Chaudhry, who is the chief of the water and natural resources branch of DESA, said the use of crops for bio-fuel production had also contributed to the worldwide rise in food prices, since it meant that a part of the natural resources had to be diverted away from the production of food crops.

"They (bio-fuel crops) depend quite heavily on land and water resources so we are using our precious natural resources for the production of these crops," Chaudhry said. "Had those natural resources been managed for the production of cereal crops, we might not have faced this crisis," he added.