GENEVA, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food Jean Ziegler demanded on Thursday an international five-year ban on producing biofuels to combat soaring food prices.

Ziegler, a Swiss national, said the conversion of arable land for plants used for green fuel had led to an explosion of agricultural prices which was punishing poor countries forced to import their food at a greater cost.

\"232 kg of corn is needed to make 50 liters of bioethanol,\" Ziegler was quoted by the Swissinfo website as saying. \"A child could live on that amount of corn for a year.\"

Using land for biofuels would result in \"massacres\", Ziegler said, predicting a reduction in the amount of food aid sent to developing countries by richer ones.

\"It\'s a total disaster for those who are starving.\" he said.

Ziegler\'s proposal for a five-year moratorium, which he plans to submit to the UN General Assembly on Oct. 25, is aiming to ban the conversion of land for the production of biofuels, Swissinfo said.

Ziegler hoped that by the time the moratorium was lifted science would have made sufficient progress to be able to create \"second generation\" biofuels, made from agricultural waste or from non-agricultural plants such as jatropha, which grows naturally onarid ground.

Only two years ago, with the fears caused by peak oil prices and climate change looming, biofuels seemed the ideal alternative energy.

Now it is the poor who have to contend with the flip side of biofuels: spiraling cereal prices, say experts.