Infrastructure Necessary to Make Ag Run Smoothly

There are things that we all take for granted; electricity — just flip a switch and there are lights. Safe water to drink — Just turn on the faucet and there is clean water. One such element critical to our nation’s agricultural success is our country’s infrastructure — our roads, byways, railroad and river systems — which allow our farmers to get their product to market in an efficient and safe manner.
Washington farmer Chad Denny shares his thoughts on improving infrastructure and how it as important today as ever before especially for the nation’s ag industry.
Denny: “We need to keep on top of this infrastructure. To keep the whole system in place and rolling is pretty crucial to the economy in Eastern Washington as well as the whole state. We’re lucky in the U.S. to have the system that we do have in place that we have. You go to Russia or South America — what’s their problem? They can produce crops. They can do it very well but they have an 80 mile dirt road to get it to market. We are pretty lucky in what we have. Now with that being said — we need to keep on top it. We are the most reliable, the safest, the quickest, we deliver time and time to again. And that is why we have value in our commodities. And without that we will fall to second-rate and we don’t want that.”
Denny says with today’s technology, more grain is being harvested and moved faster and it is going to take all kinds of transportation systems to provide the needed safe and reliable infrastructure to deliver our ag products to customers here as well as abroad.