Vienna - The international community had to take immediate measures to battle rising food prices, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday in Vienna.

"This steeply rising food prices have developed into a real global crisis... the UN is very much concerned," Ban told journalists on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of a new UN conference building.

"We must take immediate action in a concerted way," he said.

There was however no single factor for the current food crisis, but several issues like high prices for petroleum or changing consumption patterns in developing countries Ban said, so the issue had to be addressed comprehensively.

More than 100 million people, mainly the poorest of the poor, were additionally affected by the crisis, Ban said. In the short term all the humanitarian crisis affecting the world's poor must be adressed.

For finding long-term solutions, the leaders of the international community should discuss measures to improve the economic system and promote the production of agricultural products, Ban said.

He planned to discuss the matter with heads of UN organizations and programmes as well as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on April 28 and 29 in Switzerland.

The secretary general is in Austria for a three-day visit. On Friday he participated in the opening of a new conference centre at the Vienna UN building, and was scheduled to meet with Austrian leaders on the same day.

For the weekend, bilateral meetings with several heads of UN bodies in Vienna as well as the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were planned. (dpa)