<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;">The Asian Development Bank said Tuesday it will devote at least $14 billion through 2025 to help ease a worsening food crisis in the Asia-Pacific.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div>The development lender said it plans a comprehensive program of support to help the 1.1 billion people in the region who lack healthy diets due to poverty and soaring food prices.</div><div><br></div><div>The Manila, Philippines-based ADB made the announcement during its annual meeting.</div><div><br></div><div>“This is a timely and urgently needed response to a crisis that is leaving too many poor families in Asia hungry and in deeper poverty,” ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said.</div><div><br></div><div>The plan calls for improving long-term food security by strengthening farming and food supplies to cope with climate change and loss of biodiversity.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>The ADB said the funds will go to both existing and new projects spanning farming, food production and distribution, water resources management and social supports.</div><div><br></div><div>Asakawa said that in the short-term, support will be targeted at and designed to help the most vulnerable, particularly women.</div><div><br></div><div>In opening the ADB meeting, Asakawa noted that the economic outlook has worsened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, soaring prices for many commodities and a harsher economic environment thanks to rising interest rates and weakening currencies for many developing economies.</div><div><br></div><div>In a recent update, the bank downgraded its forecast for growth in the region to 4.3% from an earlier estimate of 5.2%. Next year’s outlook is for 4.9% annual growth.</div><div><br></div><div>Food insecurity threatens to undo decades of progress and has worsened with the strife in Ukraine, a key supplier of grain, oil and fertilizer to many countries in the region.</div><div><br></div><div>The situation will worsen as climate change amplifies extreme weather, hurting harvests and triggering migration, Asakawa noted, reports AP&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>The coronavirus pandemic had already pushed 100 million more people into hunger, the ADB estimates. A 10% increase in food price inflation could push another 64 million into poverty, it says.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>