ANALYSIS-Have falling markets solved the global food crisis?

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, Oct 17 (Reuters) - At first sight, it seems like good news for those fighting hunger around the world: the spikes in commodity prices that triggered food riots this year have been all but erased amid the recent financial turmoil.

But relief officials now have another fear -- that distracted donors will forget that the problem goes much deeper, and stop devoting time and money to an emergency that will only be worsened by a now-looming recession.

"There is no automatic correlation between what happens in the wheat futures market in Chicago and the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan," said John Holmes, the top U.N. humanitarian aid official, who also coordinates a task force on the food crisis.

International food prices hit nine-month lows in September and have since tumbled further as investors pulled their money from turbulent markets.

In the past three weeks alone, corn futures Cc1 have fallen 32 percent and soybean futures Sc1 28 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

"What we fear is that people will look at those (commodity) prices and think that the crisis is over," Holmes said. "We still regard it as a very urgent crisis and a major emergency."

Many food commodities are now trading at around half their peaks in June, when the United Nations called an emergency summit to tackle a crisis that had sparked protests, strikes and riots in countries including Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal, Haiti, Peru, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Afghanistan.

At that time, the U.N. World Food Programme called costlier food a "silent tsunami" threatening millions with starvation.