Minnesota Farmers Union

(March 19, 2010) - In our last three columns we have looked at the production of corn, wheat, and soybeans and the exports of corn, wheat, and soybean complex. This column looks at the sum of the three crops to give a broader picture of agriculture and particularly of the crops that account for the utilization of the majority of the acres of US cropland.

Between 1980 and 2009, the world production of corn, wheat, and soybeans grew by 86 percent, increasing from 926 million metric tons to 1.73 billion metric tons (Fig. 1 solid red line). During that same period, the world population grew from 4.5 billion people to 6.8 billion, an increase of 51 percent. On average, the world production of the three crops grew at a rate 40 percent faster than population.

World exports of corn, wheat and soybean complex grew from 218 million metric tons to 362 million metric tons during the 30 year period beginning in 1980 (Fig. 1 dashed blue line), an increase of 66 percent as nations relied less and less on imports of these crops.

Figure 1. World Production of the total of corn, wheat and soybeans and exports of the total of corn, wheat, and soybean complex, 1980-2009. Data Source: USDA.

(March 5, 2010) - We continue our look at agricultural exports. Last week corn exports were the focus; this week we look at wheat.

Historically, exports have dominated the US wheat market. For the 32 years from 1960 to 1992, US wheat exports exceeded domestic consumption in all but 7 years. But now it's the other way around.
From 1993 to 2009, domestic demand exceeded exports in 14 of those 16 years. This happened not because domestic wheat consumption has trended upward, but because US exports have declined over time. While US wheat exports have dropped markedly in terms of proportions of utilization and of production, those trends do not characterize the worldwide wheat market.

Since 1980, the percent of world wheat production entering the export/import market has been flat to down slightly (Fig. 1). During the 30-year period from 1980 to 2009, the production of wheat around the world grew by 52 percent while wheat exports grew by 36 percent.

Figure 1. World wheat exports as a percent of world wheat production, 1980-2009. Data source: USDA.