Grain Bottleneck

Grain Bottleneck

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Over the last couple of days I have had a number of conversations with National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson. He has blamed the railroad system for being preoccupied with transporting oil and coal and neglecting agreements and assumptions that the railroads would be able to transport grains. He has been talking about a catastrophe on a national basis because elevators are full from last year and farmers will need this year's crop to be transported. I had a specific interest in Idaho's producers. "One of the major bottlenecks is going out to the Pacific Northwest. Virtually all of the production, I would think, in Idaho is heading west. As it goes to export markets is going to head west. North Dakota which is my home state as a rule, write about in the middle of the state, is where you split, where the major portion of wheat in particular in the western half of the state ends up going out to the Pacific Northwest. The eastern part of the state ends up moving east but the real bottleneck seems to be moving things West in particular. They are short in all directions. For Minnesota to be bottled up in this place, eastern North Dakota, Eastern South Dakota to be full up, that's the real problem because those are areas that typically tend to go east.
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