trade restrictions played a pivotal role for this differential outcome while countries in developing asia managed to insulate themselves from the price hike through export restrictions and aggressive buying many countries in subsaharan africa experienced a sharp food price increase and had to bear the brunt of the price hike with a marked increase in undernourishment if these are insufficient tighter disciplines on export restrictions and demandaugmenting measures need to be envisaged in a second step over and above improving the trade disciplines he suggested promoting public investment in agriculture and food safety nets a wellfunctioning international trade system is all the more important in the context of increasing pressures on natural resources especially land and water and with the expectation of climate change affecting production potentials differently in different regions of the world dr van tongeren considered that the present external economic financial and fiscal environment was a good basis for further agricultural reforms