BANGKOK — For 583 million people across Asia and the Pacific the financial crisis has become a food crisis. While food prices have fallen from last year's spike, they remain high. Rising unemployment and falling incomes are putting additional pressure on poor and vulnerable groups. More worrying still is that, once the global economy recovers, the pressures that drove up food prices last year will return.

The U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) recently launched a publication, titled "Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Asia and the Pacific," at the 65th Commission session, which focuses on the same topic. Countries throughout the region are assembling in Bangkok to discuss how to deal with this persistent crisis.

Despite the regions' enormous capacity to produce food, Asia and the Pacific is home to 64 percent of the world's people living with food insecurity. Poverty is the primary cause of food insecurity in the region. This manifests itself three ways. Inadequate income makes it difficult for the poor to buy food. Lack of clean water and poor sanitation result in infections that reduce the body's ability to absorb nutrients. And lack of land means that poor people cannot grow their own food. ESCAP's report identifies 25 countries as hot spots in the region, with the worst problems existing in South and Southwest Asia as well as Southeast Asia.