BOYANE, September 7, 2008 (AFP) - The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization called Sunday on Swaziland to increase its agricultural budget to help feed its poverty-stricken population.

Jacques Diouf said he asked the Swazi government -- which has just spent millions of dollars (euros) to celebrate the nation's 40th anniversary of independence -- to raise its farming budget by 10 percent, but was rebuffed.

'I have been told that they could only increase it by seven percent,' Diouf said. 'We are only here to help, and government needs to play its part alleviating the plight of the poor.'

In Swaziland -- which faces a stagnant economy, grinding poverty and one of the highest HIV-AIDS rates in the world -- about one-third of the population relies on food aid to survive, according to official statistics.

Diouf, who is from Senegal, said he would be meeting with the government to discuss food security during his stay in Swaziland later this week.

On Sunday, Diouf visited a Swazi project teaching AIDS orphans to grow their own food -- something he said could be a model for fighting hunger throughout Africa.

'Hunger is the biggest challenge facing orphaned children who have no one to provide for them when parents die,' Diouf told AFP during a visit to Junior Farming projects run by AIDS orphans at Boyane primary school, southeast of the capital Mbabane.

School children, aged between 6 and 15 years, are equiped by FAO to grow vegetables which they then harvest and take home to feed their families.

The school is one of 21 across rural Swaziland benefitting from the joint United Nations project.

'If this model can prove to be a success here in Swaziland, then it could be adopted by schools around the country and the continent to fight hunger among vulnerable children,' Diof said.

The FAO director general spoke of turning the project into a fully-fledged food production hub that would include pig farming, poultry, fishery and cattle-raising to provide milk and meat.

Already the vegetables grown in the school garden is helping to provide balanced meals for destitute families, said Boyane teacher and project facilitator Duduzile Dlamini.

'The food we produce is cooked for children in our school kitchen and taken home by children to their guardians,' said Dlamini.