By Missy Ryan

KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 16 (Reuters) - The Bush administration warned lawmakers on Wednesday they would snatch food out of the mouths of millions if they approve restrictive rules for U.S. food aid in the new farm bill.

The need for flexible rules for purchasing and meting out aid, senior officials said at a food aid conference in Kansas City, is all the more crucial as the world comes to grips with a deepening food crisis.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer urged lawmakers to reconsider a proposal in the 2008 farm bill, the giant agriculture law moving slowly toward the White House, to set aside up to $600 million in food aid funds, almost half the budget for the biggest food aid program, for long-term development work.

He said restricting those funds for development work would sap money needed to respond quickly when disaster or famine strikes around the globe.

"It would cut off food aid to up to 8 million people," he said.

Henrietta Fore, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said flexible food aid rules and nimble humanitarian response will be even more crucial as soaring food and shipping costs eat into flat aid budgets.

"Our existing food aid resources are becoming increasingly limited -- the status quo will not be enough," she said.

With world food prices up 40 percent in 2007 and world wheat stocks at their lowest level in decades, importing nations are scrambling to ease the cost of basic staples, and protests and violence have erupted from Haiti to Burkina Faso.

The administration is also pressing Congress to loosen purchasing rules for food aid and wants permission to buy up to a quarter of food in one program in the developing world, saving money and time when compared to shipping U.S. food overseas.

That proposal has fallen on deaf ears in Congress, largely due to opposition from the coalition of crop producers, shippers and others who prefer aid be purchased at home, from American farmers.

Negotiators have been feuding for months over a host of farm bill issues. House lawmakers voted on Wednesday to ask the White House for an extra week, until April 25, to get an overall deal, and senators are due to vote later in the day.

Lawmakers are still working on the most thorny issues on food aid.

"We are working on compromises ... but no final agreement has been reached," said Kate Cyrul, spokeswoman for Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Schafer said that lawmakers were listening to farm-state constituents and "aren't hearing a balanced conversation on humanitarian need."

But defenders of the nonemergency food aid programs are working just as hard to ensure that they will be guaranteed funding in the future.

Aid groups, such as World Vision, use donations of U.S. crops or food, which they sell in poor countries, to fund projects that support health, agriculture and other development goals in poor communities.

Schafer and Fore also asked lawmakers to quickly approve $350 million in extra food aid funding in fiscal 2008.

Aid groups, which believe that even more is needed to cope with rising costs, will continue to rally for greater funds.

Catholic Relief Services, a U.S.-based aid group, asked for both short- and long-term steps on Wednesday.

"Otherwise we will end up looking back with shame on a missed opportunity to avert untold suffering on a global scale -- and to ensure that such a crisis does not happen again," said Sean Callahan, an official from the group. (Editing by Christian Wiessner)

AlertNet news is provided by