The United States has promised to send 50,000 tons of cereals, but that is not expected to arrive for three months, said Gerald Bourke, a Beijing-based spokesman for the World Food Program.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, briefing reporters in Washington, said he could not give an update on the progress of delivering the food.
"In terms of the logistical arrangements, I know that our people are working closely with the World Food Programme on those arrangements," he said.
Though he couldn't provide exact figures, Bourke said there was "very little" left in WFP stockpiles in the North.
The agency had to stop supplying vegetable oil to 1.2 million North Korean women and children in March and has stopped giving beans and grain to steadily larger groups since then, he said.
"People are gathering wild food, grasses, bracken (ferns), acorns," said Bourke, who returned Monday after three weeks in the North. "I've seen people going up into the hills ... and coming down with sacks of grass and picking through seaweed."
North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people since disclosing in the mid-1990s that its government-run farm system had collapsed.
The WFP tries to feed about 6.5 million North Koreans --
It needs 504,000 tons of food for 2005 but has so far secured about half of that, Bourke said. He said the agency needs 42,000 tons of food a month through the rest of the year, but has commitments for a total of only 60,000 tons.
"We're looking at a pretty bleak rest of the year," he said.
In addition, market reforms have pushed the price of staples like rice and corn three or four times higher than last year, he said.
Prices are so high that the average urban worker's entire annual salary, amounting to US$900 to US$1,140, will buy only about 2.5 kilograms of rice or about 3.5 kilograms of corn at free market prices, Bourke said.
Most urban North Koreans rely on government ration stations or household gardens for food.
Food shortages have made one out of three North Koreans chronically malnourished, Bourke said.
On Tuesday, diplomats began the fourth round of six-nation talks in Beijing aimed at getting North Korea to give up its alleged cache of nuclear weapons.
Despite the tensions over the nuclear issue, the United States, South Korea, Japan and China --participants in the talks --are major food donors to the North.
Donors have expressed frustration over the North's limits on aid agencies' ability to monitor who receives food.
Washington and others say they worry that supplies might be diverted to North Korea's 1 million-member military, or supporters of leader Kim Jong Il.
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