Some of the world's top firms agreed on Friday to invest in agriculture projects in Tanzania and Vietnam, warning of more unrest in the developing world if food production does not keep pace with population growth.

Business leaders announced a plan at a news conference at the World Economic Forum to increase food production by 20%, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and reducing rural poverty by 20% in a decade.

"This is timely given the news of continued rises in crop prices," said Hugh Grant, chief executive of Monsanto, the world's biggest seeds company. "The expectation is that by 2050 we will have to double the amount of food that our little planet produces."

Unhappiness with food price rises in Tunisia helped fuel the protests that led to the fall of president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month and have now spilled over into Egypt.

Analysts have said Africa is in a better position than in the past to deal with a squeeze on global supplies of food low wages across the continent make price hikes a sensitive political issue.

The scheme laid out on Friday brings together 17 global companies with governments and farmers to work on projects like one in Tanzania to develop a corridor of land to triple regional production.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said the project could lift 2 million people out of poverty.

"This corridor is going to be a bread basket," he said. "It is going to produce enough food not only for Tanzania but also for neighboring countries around us and beyond."

Rajiv Shah, from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the scheme made strategic sense.

"In the current environment of rising food prices we believe it is smarter and more efficient to support agriculture than to prevent the more costly famines, food riots and failed states that we will face if we do not make these investments," he said.

Unrest
Ahead of the annual Davos meeting, surveys of financial leaders highlighted geopolitical instability in the developing world as one of the main threats to a strengthening global economic recovery.

Asked about unrest in Egypt, Paul Polman, chief executive of food and consumer products group Unilever, said people spent 70 to 80% of their income on food in poor regions.

"If you get these big swings in food prices and basic commodities these people are confronted with these hard choices," he said. "A world where there are a billion people who are undernourished ... is not a world which is sustainable long term when you know there are another two billion people coming in the next 30 years."

Montsanto's Grant said the Davos meeting in early 2008 had been focused on high food prices.

"That conversation was chased off the front pages by the financial crisis, but it didn't go away, it simmered. The expectation was that it was solved but it has lingered," he said. "The only solution to this is to drive productivity. The demand curve is outpacing supply."