Wheat Exchange at Kansas City

choi

Jacob Bunge, Pits Go Dark in Kansas City as Storied Wheat Exchange Closes. Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 73761448937042.html
(Kansas City Board of Trade goes electronic)

Quote: "After hard red winter wheat was introduced to the region in the 1870s by Russian Mennonite immigrants, Kansas City's railroad lines carried the grain into the city's flour mills and out [presumably via Mississippi River] to the rest of the country and beyond.

Note:
(a) wheat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat
(section 1 History; section 5.1 Major cultivated species of wheat: Classes used in the United States; section 8 Production and consumption: map, table)
(b) Wheat Data. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture (DOA), undated.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/wheat-data.aspx#25382
(i) Table 1 "US Acreage, Production, Yield, and Farm Price": (production) hard red winter > hard red spring > soft red winter > white > durum)
(ii) Table 26: "U.S. wheat exports by class for selected destinations": (all wheat, 2011/2012; unit: 1,000 bushels) Japan 129,592; "China, Taiwan" 33,001; "China, Mainland" 20,672)
(c) US Wheat Association, undated
http://www.uswheat.org/whatWeDo/ ... 29D8525783000724B84
([Q:] What types or classes of wheat does China import?  [A:] In the past, China has purchased hard red winter, soft red winter and hard red spring wheat from the US. Due to the long standing TCK restrictions imposed by China, white wheat, which is grown in the Pacific Northwest, was not exported to China")

TCK is dwarf bunt, a disease caused by fungu Tilletia controversa Kuhn.
(d) My online research suggests China has only two varieties for wheat grown there: spring and winter wheat. "Winter wheat accounts for more than 90 percent of China’s total wheat output." Foreign Agricultural Service, DOA.