(April 16, 2010) – Over the last 40 years, exports account for a larger portion of US wheat production than they do for US corn production. US wheat exports increased rapidly beginning in 1971 and peaked in 1981 at 1.77 billion bushels (Fig. 1, solid blue line). Since then, US wheat exports have declined by 53 percent.
One of the debates surrounding agricultural bulk commodity exports has been the extent to which they are affected by changes in the exchange rate. Last week we studied this question with regard to US corn exports and found that there was a correlation between exports and the exchange rates of the international purchasers of US corn (US corn trade weighted exchange rate) in the 1970s, but over time that relationship weakened so that by 1991 there was no correlation between the two.
