Gordon Brown has called this afternoon's summit

Gordon Brown has called this afternoon's summit

Industry leaders are joining prime minister Gordon Brown for a summit on the global food shortage this afternoon [Tuesday].

Ahead of the meeting, NFU president Peter Kendall said he will be stressing the need for new technology and investment in order to make agriculture more productive.

Director general of the NFU Richard Macdonald said: “The NFU is hugely interested in the world food debate and we strongly believe farmers are capable of producing the food the world needs but they must be able to do so at a profit.

“This will mean higher prices for food products across the world not least to meet the significant higher costs incurred by farmers in producing fresh, quality produce.

“To meet growing demand across the globe, production will increase, with more land taken into production, and this will impact on global food prices. However they do need to remain significantly higher than the low historic prices which were completely unsustainable. We look forward to participating in the summit.”

The meeting is expected to finish at 6pm.