Reaching global food security and tackling poverty and hunger remain far away goals due to a lack of successful strategies and the persisting economic crisis, the Group of Eight (G8) agriculture ministers said on Sunday in a draft statement.

The G8 ministers at their first-ever agricultural meeting in northeast Italy are to present Monday morning the final joint document, enlarged to the views of the G5 countries, namely China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico, as well as Argentina, Egypt and Australia.

According to the draft, the world is far from reaching the United Nations Millennium Goal that pledged to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, a problem worsened by the financial turmoil.

The document added that price volatility and the unbalance between food supply and demand suggest fears about global food security will continue.

With these considerations, G8 agriculture ministers thus admitted that little has been done in the past to fight world famine and poverty. Strategies so far implemented at a global level have produced unsatisfactory results.

The conclusions came after the negative data released by international institutions. The United Nations estimates that in the world today there are more than a billion hungry people.

The draft stressed that the economic recession has worsened the situation, increasing the number of poor and hungry people. "Structural factors may underpin prices over the medium term and increased volatility and demand raise important questions about food security for the future," it said.

The Group of Eight comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. Italy holds current G8 presidency.