Changing consumer preferences are driving changes in the way food
is produced, marketed, and traded. With world economies growing
more integrated and both capital and technology moving more freely
across national boundaries, the welfare of U.S. food producers is
increasingly tied to foreign consumers. That's where ERS's Mark
Gehlhar and Anita Regmi come in. Three years ago, together with
other researchers in ERS, they began to investigate changes in food
consumption and its implications for international trade. Since
then, as public interest has grown, they have broadened their analyses
to cover new market developments, including how retailing, cost-reducing
technologies, and foreign manufacturing are changing the global
landscape of food markets. They are now probing international retail
sales and trade data to identify different strategies employed by
food suppliers in meeting consumer demand in the global marketplace.
Their work illustrates that the U.S. food industry is a unique combination
of export-dependent sectors and less trade-oriented firms that often
own foreign assets and global brands. As such, trade numbers and
financial performance of the U.S. food sector do not always align,
since U.S. food companies sell five times more through sales via
foreign affiliates in overseas markets than through U.S. export
sales.
Mark and Anita contend that growing income, shifting diets, and
restructuring in food retailing will largely shape global food trade
in the coming years. Early work from their project is presented
in Changing
Structure of Global Food Consumption and Trade, WRS-01-1. Along
with a team of ERS researchers, they are also working on "Global
Markets for High-Value Foods," which will be released later
this year. In February 2003, Mark and Anita organized a workshop
on the same topic to generate a discussion on the changes taking
place in the global food economy and examine its relevance for policymakers
(proceedings will be posted at www.farmfoundation.org).
Mark has had a longstanding interest in trade and economic development,
and has been involved in the Global Trade Analysis Project, a collaborative
effort among national and international universities and research
institutions to build a global policy and trade analysis tool. Much
of his research has focused on structural shifts in global trade
and impacts of policy, technical change, and economic growth. Anita's
research interests have been wide and varied, ranging from groundwater
pollution, integrated pest management, and trade in developing countries
to changing food preferences and the global food market. In addition
to conducting research, Anita has policy experience from her 4-year
stint with USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). While at FAS,
Anita focused on international agricultural commodity markets and
bilateral/multilateral trade agreements. As a member of the FAS
team in charge of World Trade Organization negotiations, she oversaw
agricultural issues concerning developing countries
