It's hard to believe how much grain needs to be shipped down the Mississippi River to keep the massive elevators in New Orleans working at full capacity. If we're going to double yields over the next few decades, we've also got to invest in new facilities to get these valuable grains to market around the world.
River delays cost time and money. With smaller locks on the Upper Mississippi River, we can expect to lose as much as $500,000 a day until problems are addressed.
Barges move 1 ton of grain 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel. Compare that to semi trucks that moves 1 ton of grain only 60 miles on a single gallon, and you'll see why grain barges still hold the keys to grain export.
Many locks on the Mississippi River were built to last 50 years. Those locks are now 70 years old. What happens to river transport if the U.S. doesn't invest in its infrastructure?
When aging infrastructure brings barges to a standstill for as long as 12 hours, all the design in the world can't save what amounts to $100 million in delay-related costs.
Farmers effectively grow and market their crops, but the grain still has to be transported to its final destination. Sometimes, this is a food processing plant 89 miles away, a local ethanol plant or an export market that requires barging grain down the Mississippi River.
With considerable talk taking place about the possibility of boosting average yields to 300 bushels of corn and 100 bushels of soybeans per acre by 2030, there are plenty of agronomic questions on how we can make this happen.
In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we look at President Trump's tariff reduction on ag equipment, the latest dealer sales forecasts, and how high input costs are keeping farmer sentiment down.
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