UN agencies must adapt in tough times: US envoy

ROME (Reuters) - U.N. agencies dedicated to fighting hunger must become more efficient during tough economic times to ensure aid gets to the world's most needy, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to U.N. agencies in Rome said on Tuesday.

Asked whether the global financial crisis could put fighting hunger on the backburner of the global agenda, Gaddi H. Vasquez told reporters: "That's my greatest worry."

"It will be important for these organisations to be cost effective and efficient. In these types of situations, you have to be able to do more with less," he said.

The United States, the world's largest donor of food aid, has been a proponent of structural reform at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to make it more effective.

Vasquez said he was optimistic that improvements would be made and lauded the FAO's support of partnerships with private organisations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

He also applauded work by the World Food Programme to seek small, private donations from individuals instead of simply banking on big cheques from donor countries, which can become harder when member nations' budgets are tight.

"You find different ways of doing business," he said.

High food prices helped push another 40 million people into hunger in 2008, the FAO said in a report last month, raising the number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million.

Vasquez, a former director of the U.S. Peace Corps, said that fact alone was enough to ensure that global food security would figure high on the agenda of the next Group of Eight (G8) summit, due to be held in Italy in July.