Leaders from Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua have announced a joint program to fight rising food costs in Latin America. Meeting in Caracas, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, says it will create a $100 million Food Security Fund. Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said the food crisis underscores the need for radical change.

Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage: “The developed nations propose to destine each time more food for the production of energy. The developed society intends to feed the automobiles of the rich, of the wealthy society with food. It is an irrational world in which we live today. This is the world that we have to transform and that we are going to transform.”

The declaration came hours after the World Food Program declared the global food crisis a “silent tsunami” that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger and poverty.