ROME, Italy (AP) - More than a billion people - a sixth of the world's population - are now hungry, a historic high due largely to the global economic crisis and stubbornly high food prices, a UN agency said yesterday.

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said.

Almost all the world's undernourished live in developing countries, where food prices have fallen more slowly than in the richer nations, the report said. Poor countries need more aid and agricultural investment to cope, it said.

"The silent hunger crisis, affecting one-sixth of all of humanity, poses a serious risk for world peace and security," said the agency's Director General Jacques Diouf.

Officials presenting the new estimates in Rome sought to stress the link between hunger and peace, noting that soaring prices for staples, such as rice, triggered riots in the developing world last year.

"Food security is one of our most critical peace and security issues of our time," said Josette Sheeran of the World Food Program, another UN food agency based in Rome.

"A hungry world is a dangerous world," she told reporters.

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