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Economist Marijke Drysdale with the Global Information and Early Warning System, a division of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said "simply throwing money" at world hunger was not a sustainable solution, the Times of Moscow reported.

However, "Russia still has a lot of land that can be used much more productively than is done now", she said.

Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the affect of rising food prices on the poor would be a major topic of discussion at the Group of Eight nations meeting in Osaka, Japan, on Friday and Saturday.

The World Bank announced an initiative to raise $1.2 billion "to address immediate needs arising form the food crisis", the Times reported.

But, how the G8 nations will help is " too early to say", a Finance Ministry spokesman said.

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