staple food like rice and wheat, it’s affecting the poor households which spend as much as 70 percent of their income for food,” Konuma said.

The FAO's representative for the Asia-Pacific region, Hiroyuki Konuma, says rising food costs in Asia are mainly affecting the region’s poor.

Konuma says the region's rice production is expected to increase by more than two percent this year while wheat production will decline about four percent.