Ferried in by helicopters and boats or loaded on the backs of yaks and elephants, massive amounts of food aid have reached millions of homeless or hungry people after disasters in the last few years.

But while the world rises to the challenge of saving those survivors from starvation, hundreds of millions go hungry from a catastrophe that has stubbornly lasted for decades: the failure of agriculture in much of Africa and some parts of Asia and Latin America to ensure enough food for their own.

World leaders convening in Rome on Tuesday to grapple with skyrocketing food prices will have to make progress on this problem if they want to eradicate chronic hunger, say UN experts, nonprofit aid groups and economists.

As the recent outpouring of nearly $1 billion to help the UN purchase emergency aid during the current food price crisis might show, the world can be more willing to take on dramatic emergencies than to invest in helping poor countries to feed themselves.

“What we’ve seen is we’re getting better at emergencies, but getting worse at tackling chronic hunger,” said Duncan Green, director of research at Oxfam, a British aid group.

“Even in 2006, which was a good food (harvest) year, 850 million people were hungry,” said Raj Patel, a political economist who testified earlier this month before Congress about the food crisis. “It’s part of a chronic crisis which has recently become acute”because of soaring prices.

Agricultural development has been “horrendously neglected,” Oxfam’s Green said in a telephone interview from Britain before the June 3-5 UN summit in Rome. “I’d say it’s three decades of neglect,” said Jim Butler, deputy director-general of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, which is hosting the summit. He said his agency will encourage aid to small farmers in the form of seed, feed, supplies, fertiliser and technology.

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