The Washington-based World Bank on Monday said it stood ready to respond to global food price volatility triggered by concerns including the drought in the United States.

World Bank figures revealed that food prices have risen across all the non-rice grains this year, with wheat prices up more than 50 percent since mid-June, the price for corn surging more than 45 percent since mid-June and soybean prices up almost 30 percent since the beginning of June.

"When food prices rise sharply, families cope by pulling their kids out of school and eating cheaper, less nutritious food, which can have catastrophic life-long effects on the social, physical, and mental well being of millions of young people," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement.

"The World Bank and our partners are monitoring this situation closely so we can help governments put policies in place to help people better cope," Kim added.

The impact of the US drought on global markets was exacerbated by other countries also currently suffering from weather-related production issues. Almost continuous rain was causing problems for the wheat crop in many European countries, whereas the wheat crops in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have been hit hard by a lack of rain.

"The World Bank has long cautioned that we can expect to see volatile, higher than average grain prices until at least 2015. In the poorest countries, where people spend up to two-thirds of their daily income on food, rising prices are a threat to global growth and social stability," noted the statement.

In the short-term, measures such as school feeding programs, conditional cash transfers, and food-for-work programs can help to ease pressure on the poor, said Kim, who took the helm of the World Bank at the beginning of this month.

"In the medium- to long-term, the world needs strong and stable policies and sustained investments in agriculture in poor countries. We cannot allow short-term food-price spikes to have damaging long-term consequences for the world's most poor and vulnerable," he stressed.