The Group of Eight summit should commit to greater investment in agriculture to help the world's poor people feed themselves and stop relying on crisis handouts, the head of a U.N. food agency said Monday.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he expects this week's G-8 meeting in Italy to help reverse a decades-long trend toward dwindling investment in agricultural development and instead focus on helping poor countries to "produce food through their own farmers."

Diouf declined to comment on reports that the world's eight most industrialized countries at their three-day meeting in L'Aquila would commit more than $12 billion (some euro8.5 billion) over the next three years to develop farming in poorer nations, with at least half of that coming from traditionally generous donors, the United States and Japan.

"I'm waiting for the final document ... but the trend is in the right direction," Diouf said at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters. "The focus will be on assisting countries to produce their food, as almost all the increase in population will happen in developing countries" over the next few years.

U.N. officials have warned that world food production must be doubled by 2050 if the planet's population is to be adequately fed.

Last month, U.N. officials said the global financial meltdown had pushed the ranks of the world's hungry to 1 billion, a grim record they described as a potential threat to peace and security.

"I will be asking on behalf of 1 billion hungry people around the world" that the G-8 take up "the root causes of the problems, and the root causes of the problem have been that we have not invested in agriculture," Diouf said.

The U.N. agency chief, who will address world leaders at the summit on Friday, lamented that the share of agricultural development aid plunged from 17 percent of all aid in 1980 to 3.8 percent in 2006, although it has since risen to 5 percent.

The U.S. embassy to the U.N. food agencies said it had no comment on the reported multibillion dollar commitment, and no one was available at Japan's embassy.

France, another G-8 member, indicated the push at the L'Aquila summit would be to boost agricultural development.

"We think it is necessary to both continue urgent food aid efforts and to work on the development of the agricultural sector, which alone is capable of bringing a lasting response to this major global challenge," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier told on online briefing on Monday.

France wants to help create an investment fund for agriculture in Africa with private, national and international investors. It will be operational at the end of 2009 with capital of euro200 million ($275 million).

Diouf said he hopes a U.N. food summit in November in Rome will take up his call to wipe out all hunger in the world by 2025.