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Additional macroeconomic variables besides trade have a role in achieving food security objectives, and history shows that excluding them from the equation can lead to ineffective or counter-productive policymaking.

The following post by former International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) senior researcher Alberto Valdés is part of an ongoing series of blog stories celebrating IFPRI’s 40th anniversary .

This article is reposted with permission from farmdoc daily and is part of a farmdoc daily series on the implications of the 2014 farm bill for (1) U.S. commitments on farm subsidies under the current World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture and (2) current attempts to revitalize the Doha Round negotiations for new WTO trade rules.

Ongoing conflict puts Yemen at the top of the list of projected acutely food insecure populations for January 2016, according to the latest Food Assistance Outlook Brief from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) . FEWS NET is a leading provider of early warning and analysis on acute food insecurity, and the Food Assistance Outlook Brief summarizes FEWS NET’s most forward-looking analysis of projected emergency food assistance needs in FEWS NET coverage countries.

Official Development Assistance, or ODA, provides a fundamental source of financing in the poorest and most fragile countries. Current ODA is estimated at $135 billion USD a year, but investment needs in infrastructure alone reach up to $1.5 trillion a year in emerging and developing countries according to the World Bank Group.