By 2050, global food production, processing, and distribution systems will be tasked with meeting the nutritional needs of nearly 10 billion people. To meet growing demand, promoting agri-business development and food system commercialisation in emerging markets will remain key focus areas for international development (IDEV) professionals across the food security, economic development, and health and nutrition spaces.
Agri-business landscapes vary significantly across geographies. Euromonitor’s data and analysis are internationally cross comparable, illuminating the diversity of needs and capacities across markets. In the next 30 years, identifying growing population centres, consumer preferences, and distribution channels are critical to mapping food system capacities and developing strategies to meet global nutritional needs.
Global Agricultural Production Growth 2015-2020
Consumer Expenditure on Food & Beverages Forecast 2020-2025
Equipped with production and distribution insights, development practitioners can leverage both policy and private sector engagement to improve food availability and affordability across geographic, demographic, and behavioural consumer segments. With an emphasis on improved nutrition, market research supports food system development in the IDEV space with a focus on strengthening value chains, identifying and improving distribution, and understanding consumer trends across socio-economic contexts.
Value chain analysis
Agricultural value chains integrate a diversity of stakeholders; from those involved in the procurement of raw materials and machinery, to processing functions, to distribution and marketing. Understanding a given country’s positioning in each market segment at the national, regional, and international levels is foundational to strengthening value chains globally. Research to uncover the in-country structure of a value chain involves detailed cost, benefit, and margin analyses, distinguishing key players and their market shares, mapping locations of suppliers and consumers, and developing market segments based on consumer profiles, pricing, and preferences. Production indicators such as firmographics, employment, imports and exports, profitability, and suppliers serve to illuminate industrial capacities across sectors and geographies.
Identifying market failures, opportunities, and risks specific to each market can support the development of strategic interventions to improve SME competitiveness.
Euromonitor’s Approach to Food Systems Focuses on Diagnosis and Alignment Across
Key distribution channels
Identifying key distribution channels to most efficiently reach a given population or demographic group is a critical stage in both value chain enhancement and in successful export development. In countries where informal markets are dominant, Euromonitor has designed and tested methodologies for researching food categories to understand and size markets.
In-person surveys additionally provide insights into consumer habits, to understand attitudes and purchasing habits around naturally biofortified foods for example. More generally, surveys can be used to assess the popularity of a given food product, preferred store type, and common product positioning trends based on socioeconomic factors such as income group, urban vs rural, etc.
Understanding consumer trends
Understanding the health and wellness needs of a given population, as related to consumer trends towards adopting nutritional food products across markets, further supports IDEV professionals to illustrate the market potential to support investment in fortified foods or other nutritional alternatives.
For example, to support the commercialisation of fortified foods, market insights on food sales by prime positioning and key functional ingredients, as well as on per capita consumption of key nutrients (protein, fibre, sugar, etc.) help agribusiness stakeholders to understand a consumer market and build an investment case to transition to fortified alternatives. Food availability in terms of product and calories in a given market can demonstrate the degree of need.
Global Growth Forecast for Fortified/Functional Food Products 2020-2025
Agribusiness development in emerging markets will be key to meeting 2050’s projected global food demand. Through value chain enhancements, targeted distribution, and the commercialisation of more nutritional food products, Euromonitor supports IDEV professionals to build capacity by understanding production landscapes, conducting impact assessments, and identifying nutritional deficits and consumer preferences. For more information, reach out to Euromonitor’s dedicated IDEV team today.