South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will account for 78% of the world's food demand growth over the next 10 years, and U.S. farm policy needs to start courting those buyers before competitors lock them in, according to a report released Wednesday by the Farm Journal Foundation.

The 44-page paper, "Building the Next Generation of U.S. Agricultural Export Markets," argues that the traditional customer base of Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, the European Union and South Korea has limited room to expand and already buys a narrow commodity slate. Those six destinations together took about $132 billion of U.S. agricultural exports in 2022, up from $37 billion in 2000, the report said.

But that concentration has become a liability. China's purchases peaked at $38 billion in 2022 and collapsed to roughly $8.4 billion in 2025 as Brazil filled the gap, leaving the top-six share of exports at about three-fifths today, the report noted. "The U.S. is working to mend trade relations with China," with President Donald Trump scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping this week, the report observed.

What does the report recommend?

The paper, authored by Shawn Arita, associate director of the Agricultural Risk Policy Center at North Dakota State University, outlines four levers: coordinate existing federal capabilities, fund local capacity building, engage frontier markets directly, and back the adoption of U.S. regulatory and biosafety standards overseas.

"Two areas stand out in particular: South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Over the next 10 years, we expect 78% of the world's global food demand to come out of those regions," Arita said at a Wednesday lunch-and-learn event in Washington.

Why are frontier markets hard to crack?

The report lists six structural gaps that keep so-called frontier markets out of reach:

• Low demand base
• Missing value chains
• Weak institutions
• No commercial relationships
• Trade barriers and protectionism
• Risk and unfamiliarity

Arita said the work required is patient and underappreciated. "One of the underlying messages of the report is that these frontier markets are very, very difficult to establish a foothold to grow, and that these markets, they don't build themselves. They do take this proactive level of engagement, and part of that formula is some of these food security and development investments," he said.

What role do food-aid programs play?

The report points to Food for Peace, McGovern-Dole and Food for Progress as early-stage market builders. The paper found that in 2024, seven of every ten dollars of U.S. agricultural exports went to countries with a history of U.S. food-security or agricultural development engagement. Arita cited South Korea, a rice-consuming nation that built wheat familiarity through decades of food-security programming, as a template.

"A commercial market usually develops through a long sequence rather than a single intervention," the report said.

How stable is the funding?

Not very. The House-passed FY 2027 agriculture appropriations bill would fund Food for Peace at $900 million, a $300 million cut, according to a Republican fact sheet cited in the report. Lawmakers held McGovern-Dole flat at $240 million.

Food for Peace also lost its institutional home earlier this year when the Trump administration shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had administered the program. USDA now runs it temporarily, but Congress will have to authorize a permanent transfer.

What comes next?

With the Trump-Xi meeting underway and the FY 2027 appropriations process still in its early stages, the report lands as farm-belt groups debate whether commodity-specific trade missions or food-aid pipelines deliver better long-run returns per federal dollar. Arita's conclusion is that the choice is false: frontier markets cannot wait for a trade-deal windfall, and the U.S. either funds the slow work or cedes those buyers to competitors already in the field.