Asia-Pacific ministers' food meeting

Agriculture ministers from Asia and the Pacific have begun a two-day meeting in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, to discuss ways of boosting farm production and reducing hunger in the region.

The meeting, attended by forty countries, follows a similar gathering in the city of senior officials who called for improving the conditions of small farmers to reduce hunger. The meeting comes ahead of next month's food summit in Rome.

Asian and the Pacific is home to two-thirds of the eight-hundred million hungry people who live in the developing world.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service