A man looks at food at Khartoum's central food market July 18, 2012.

ROME | Thu Aug 9, 2012 5:11am EDT

ROME (Reuters) - The world could face a new food crisis of the kind seen in 2007/08 if countries resort to export bans, the UN's food agency warned on Thursday, after reporting a surge in global food prices due to a drought-fuelled grain price rally.

A mix of high oil prices, growing use of biofuels, bad weather, restrictive export policies and soaring grain futures markets pushed up prices of food in 2007/08, sparking violent protests in countries including Egypt, Cameroon and Haiti.

Concern about extreme hot and dry weather in the U.S. Midwest sent corn and soybean prices to record highs last month, driving overall food prices higher again and reversing the Food and Agriculture Organisation's expectations for steady declines this year.

"There is a potential for a situation to develop like we had back in 2007/08," FAO's senior economist and grain analyst Abdolreza Abbassian told Reuters.

"There is an expectation that this time around we will not pursue bad policies and intervene in the market by restrictions, and if that doesn't happen we will not see such a serious situation as 2007/08. But if those policies get repeated, anything is possible."

Grain markets have been boosted by speculation that Black Sea grain producers, particularly Russia might impose export restrictions after a drought there hit crops.

Markets drew a little comfort from official Russian comments on Wednesday that the country saw no grounds to ban grain exports this year but did not rule out protective export tariffs after the end of the 2012 calendar year.

The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged 213 points in July against 201 points in June, the FAO said in its monthly index update.

The rise followed three months of declines. Although below a peak of 238 points in February 2011, when high food prices helped drive the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the index is still higher now than during the food price crisis in 2007/08.

Higher food prices mean higher import bills for the poorest countries, which do not produce enough food domestically.

Charity Oxfam said that the surge in grain prices could drag millions of people around the world into conditions of hunger and malnourishment, in addition to nearly one billion who are already too poor to feed themselves.

Abbassian said the situation was still quite different from 2007/08, when crude oil prices were at record levels, adding to farmers' costs.

Abundant supplies of rice and sluggish economic growth should also ease the upward pressure on prices, but a lot will depend on how the weather develops for U.S. crops and how much demand will be rationed in coming months, he said.

The Rome-based food agency usually does not release the food price index this month but it has broken with tradition due to the exceptional market situation.

It did not update its supply and demand outlook for cereals on Thursday as it does during a normal release. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will publish its August crop production and supply/demand report on Friday.

(Reporting By Catherine Hornby; editing by Veronica Brown and Keiron Henderson)

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U.S. President Barack Obama greets members of the audience after delivering remarks at an election campaign fundraiser in Stamford, Connecticut, August 6, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 8, 2012 8:15pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the future but voters do not seem to be holding it against Democratic President Barack Obama, who slightly expanded his lead over Republican rival Mitt Romney this month, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll says.

Three months before the November 6 presidential election, nearly two-thirds of Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction. Only 31 percent say it is moving in the right direction - the lowest number since December 2011.

But Obama's lead over Romney among registered voters was 49 percent to 42 percent, up slightly from the 6-point advantage the president held a month earlier over the former Massachusetts governor.

The results of the monthly poll - in which a majority of voters agreed that the economy is the most important problem facing the United States - suggest that the Obama campaign's efforts to paint Romney as being out of touch with the concerns of middle-class Americans could be preventing the Republican from gaining momentum in the race.

"The overall 'right track, wrong track' is worse than last month - the news hasn't been great lately," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson. "But Obama seems to be, to some extent, inoculated against some of the worst of that."

The telephone poll of 1,168 adults, including 1,014 registered voters, was taken from August 2 to August 6. During that period, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers hired the most workers in five months but that the nation's jobless rate had risen to 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent.

Even so, in a reversal from July, registered voters thought Obama was stronger than Romney in dealing with jobs and the economy, and with tax issues.

The poll indicated that 46 percent of registered voters thought Obama was stronger on jobs and the economy, compared with 44 percent for Romney. And on tax matters, 49 percent saw Obama as stronger, compared with 38 percent for Romney.

In an advertising blitz that has been focused on a dozen politically divided states, Obama and his Democratic allies have been hammering Romney's record as a private equity executive at Bain Capital, accusing him of plundering companies and shipping jobs overseas.

'KITCHEN SINK' STRATEGY

The Obama team's ads also have questioned why Romney - who has an estimated fortune of up to $250 million - will not release more than two years of tax returns, and have suggested that Romney has paid far lower tax rates than most Americans.

"The Democrats' current strategy of just pummeling Romney on Bain and on the economy has been kind of a kitchen sink thing," Jackson said. "Even if it's not necessarily hurt Romney, it's given him no opportunity to build a lead."

Obama's new lead on the issue of jobs and the economy is particularly significant, Jackson said.

"That is the key issue in this race," he said. "For Romney to be able to make a convincing argument and to win the election, he's going to have to have a fairly significant lead over Obama on that measure."

Jackson said Romney - who has based his campaign on the notion that he would be better than Obama at dealing with the economy - likely needs to have at least a 5- to 8-point lead over Obama on the jobs and economy issue to win the election.

"There's certainly no case at the moment that Romney's building some sort of momentum toward victory here," Jackson said.

The Reuters/Ipsos survey, conducted over landline and cell phones, has a margin of error of 3 percent for all adults and 3.4 percent for registered voters.

(For the full poll, please click on the following link: here)

(Editing by David Lindsey and Vicki Allen)

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