Past Research has used export shipments as the dependent variable in econometric modeling of international agricultural trade This article describes export sales data, contrasting sales to shipments, and it provides numerical and statistical measures of the similarity of sales to shipments data Forward sales are analyzed, together with econometric estimations of the lead/lag relationship between current shipments and current and past values of sales The two variables are quite different graphically, numerically, and statistically Thus, one should exercise caution in using shipments data as an economic variable