Elasticities for U.S. Wheat Food Use by Class

We conceptualize wheat for food use as an input into flour production and derive demand functions to quantify price responsiveness and economic substitutability across wheat classes. Cost, price, and substitution elasticities are estimated for hard red winter, hard red spring, soft red wheat, soft white winter, and durum wheat. In general, hard red winter and spring wheat varieties are much more responsive to their own price than are soft wheat varieties and durum wheat. Morishima elasticities indicate that hard red winter and hard red spring wheat are economic substitutes for milling purposes.