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BANGKOK — For 583 million people across Asia and the Pacific the financial crisis has become a food crisis. While food prices have fallen from last year's spike, they remain high. Rising unemployment and falling incomes are putting additional pressure on poor and vulnerable groups. More worrying still is that, once the global economy recovers, the pressures that drove up food prices last year will return.

The U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) recently launched a publication, titled "Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Asia and the Pacific," at the 65th Commission session, which focuses on the same topic. Countries throughout the region are assembling in Bangkok to discuss how to deal with this...