LSU Global Supply Chains Expert Earns Significant Farm Foundation Fellowship

By Kyle Peveto

LSU AgCenter

Sunghun Lim, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the LSU AgCenter and College of Agriculture, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship that will further his research and connect him with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of the Chief Economist.

Lim, a leading scholar in the realm of global supply chains who joined the LSU faculty in 2022, serves as director of the LSU Global Value Chains Program and was recently named the Farm Foundation 2025 Agricultural Economics Trade and Sustainability Fellow.

The fellowship focuses on “understanding and overcoming the challenges in developing a greater understanding of how trade and sustainability are interconnected and are impacting the food and agricultural sectors in the United States,” according to a Farm Foundation news release.

The yearlong fellowship offers Lim an opportunity to work closely with the USDA Office of the Chief Economist staff and act as a mentor to Farm Foundation staff and USDA Economic Research Service Agricultural Scholars program participants. Lim will attend roundtable discussions at Farm Foundation headquarters, where he can share prominent issues he sees in the agricultural industry.

Lim joined the LSU faculty in 2022 after two years on the faculty at Texas Tech University. He became interested in how agriculture and the economy interact as he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of California, Davis, and completed his doctorate in applied economics at the University of Minnesota in 2020. He was appointed to serve as the 2025-2027 U.S. universities representative on the Executive Committee of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.

“I am looking at what the global value chain in the agriculture and food sector looks like and how participating in the global value chain system affects a country’s economic outcomes, such as our labor market, structural transformation or sustainability,” Lim said.

Lim’s research has been published in leading academic journals, including American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Nature Communications, NBER Book, Food Policy, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Handbook of Agricultural Economics and The World Economy.

Lim has made several unexpected connections to global trade and its effects on people. He has studied how trade policies between the United States and China have affected the economy of the United States and other trading partner countries and how participating in the global value chain can help countries change from agrarian to service-based economies. Other connections include evidence that participating in the global value chain can increase obesity in a country because residents will have more access to processed foods.

The global value chain has been thrust into the news as tariffs affect world trade. Lim recommends Louisianans remain informed and consider how these trade shocks will affect business and life at home.

“How does it affect our local economy or state-level economy, and how do the ongoing trade shocks affect our economy in Louisiana or stakeholders and industry?” Lim said. “It’s a very big issue.”