1983 World wheat facts and trends. Report two: an analysis of rapidly rising Third World consumption and imports of wheat

Abstract

The world wheat economy has dramatically changed over the last three decades. In the period immediately following World War II, wheat trade was dominated by the developed market economics. The USA, Canada and Australia were exporting wheat destined primarily for Western Europe and Japan. Throughout the 1960s and particularly the 1970s, developing countries of the world, as well as Eastern Europe and the USSR (to a lesser extent), imported increasingly large amounts of wheat. During this same period Western Europe emerged as a net exporter of wheat. The developing countries' share of world wheat imports rose from one-fourth of the total in 1955 to