Clinton calls on business to end hunger

Clinton said businesses could help solve the problem by providing farm credits, help improve agricultural productivity and foster storage and distribution systems in developing countries.

"This is not a thing that government can do alone. We have to have heavy private sector involvement," Clinton said. "The money here is not going to be massive and the payoff is going to be great."

He said he believed the future would see much more food produced locally and that would help reduce world hunger.

"The energy prices and supply reality alone, the inevitable necessity to get the developing world involved with the developed world in the fight against climate change, all of these things are going to drive us toward more agricultural self-sufficiency," Clinton said.

Clinton and Geldof spoke at a luncheon Wednesday devoted to bringing the private sector into a partnership with government and civil society to help meet the UN millennium development goal of halving the number of hungry people on Earth by 2015.

Currently there are some 923 million people going hungry on the planet and world food production will have to double by 2050 to keep up with population growth, according to the UN.

Geldof challenged the private sector to look at the problem--especially in Africa, the world's poorest continent, as a business opportunity rather than a charity case.

"There should be a logical approach to the business of Africa, a continent that has yet to be built and is open for business," he said. "There's nothing that means you have to go there with a bleeding heart, anything different than just creating profit, opportunity and growth."

He also pointed out how skewed investment for agriculture was in a continent that is home to some 900 million people.