Venezuela has offered allies $US100 million ($A106.24 million) to fight rising food costs for Latin America's poor.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said the money would help finance a grain bank and other programs drafted at a meeting of Latin American leaders this week in Managua.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called the two-day meeting so regional allies could find ways to cooperate in fighting a looming world food crisis.
Malnutrition is already common in poverty ridden Central America, which depends on imported oil and fertiliser to operate its farms.
In Mexico, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said high food prices would continue until at least 2015.