Long term consequences of changing global food consumption patterns on U.S. agricultural commodity export demand

Developing countries now buy a larger share of U.S. agricultural exports than developed countries, and this new pattern of agricultural trade can have implications for the elasticity of U.S. export demand. This research estimates whether the U.S. export demand is becoming more price elastic or inelastic. A multi-market, multi-region partial equilibrium model is used to estimate the U.S. export demand for corn and wheat for the current crop year 2014/15 and projected year 2022/23. U.S. export demand for wheat is more elastic as compared to corn in the base period, suggesting that with the growing role of more price sensitive consumers in developing countries as well as the large share of the U.S. in corn markets. Export demands are found to become less elastic, or even inelastic, over a ten-year projection period if income growth is steady. Results support non-constant elasticities in medium- or long-run analysis, such as might be required for climate or food security research.