(ROME) — As much as $20 billion per year will be needed to boost food production to combat hunger worsened by soaring fuel and food prices, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Wednesday.

The United Nations chief told a news conference at a summit on the world food crisis that most of the funds would come from concerned countries themselves. However, he said the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and development banks will need to contribute.

Ban said he received a petition signed by more than 300,000 people worldwide asking leaders for quick action and fundamental reform to end the crisis.

“We must make the international trade system work more effectively to make more food available, at reasonable prices” and boost harvests next year through the urgent supply of seeds and fertilizer, the U.N. leader told reporters.

Summit delegates have been divided over the role that biofuels are playing in driving up prices to the point of provoking riots in some countries. “We need more research and analysis on this issue,” Ban said.

Making fuels from corn, sugar and other organic material uses up food that could feed people or animals, he said. “It is one of the causes” for soaring prices, but its impact still has to be evaluated, he said.

The three-day summit at the U.N. Food and Agriculture headquarters in Rome, which ends Thursday, was organized to come up with short-term solutions to the crisis and develop more lasting strategy to deal with its causes.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters there has been “considerable consensus” by summit participants on the causes of the crisis and how it should be handled.

Zoellick did not say what might come out of a final document being worked on. Some 40 world leaders attended Tuesday’s opening session.

“This is not rocket science,” said John Holmes, the U.N.’s humanitarian affairs chief, who is coordinating a special task force on the food crisis.

“We know what to do, now we just need to do it,” he told a news conference.

Associated Press reporter Frances D’Emilio contributed to this report.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1811638,00.html