11/07/06 Railroads and barley

Farm and Ranch November 7, 2006 Acres planted to barley in the U.S. have dropped to historical lows. And while there are several reasons for that, Evan Hays, Idaho producer and president of the National Barley Growers Association, told a Surface Transportation Board hearing last week that the railroads are a big reason for the decline. Evans described for the STB the loss of a 60-70 million bushel annual market for feed barley in the California dairy industry because of shuttle trains of corn. Evans: " Now I don't have a fight with corn. We'll compete with corn in the marketplace. Where my criticism comes is that this corn is being shipped into the milk shed industry we used to have, according to the California Corn Foundation, at 120-145% of variable, while our barley that was being shipped into California, is now being shipped out of two of our major barley producing states, North Dakota and Montana, at between 250 and 450% of variable. What we have in that situation, is we have a transportation industry that has dictated the marketplace for our commodity." The response of the Class 1 railroads to that at the hearing was we'll quote a rate to go anywhere but it may not be what the customer wants to hear, because we are not in the business of subsidizing someone else's business. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.