ISU CARD economist John Beghin will help the Food Security and Development Branch (FSDB) of the Economic Research Service of USDA in its annual assessment of food security in 76 low- and middle-income countries. Beghin will identify and incorporate improvements in the modeling framework used for the assessment, which currently has a strong focus on food availability, but is less robust in its ability to analyze the remaining three dimensions of food security--access, utilization, and stability. The primary objective of this agreement is to strengthen the model’s capacity to analyze food access by various income groups and improve the micro economic foundations in the FSDB modeling framework.