The nation’s top agriculture official is raising alarms about the looming shortage of rail cars to carry grain from Midwestern fields to market.
U-S Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says railroad officials should have anticipated the coming bumper harvest and been ready with sufficient cars for delivery.
The former governor of Iowa, the nation’s top corn and soybean producer, says two of the biggest railroads…BNSF and Canadian Pacific…claim they’re investing in more staff and equipment, but he says, the moves aren’t coming quickly enough as farmers are already beginning to harvest crops.
Vilsack says railroads should be penalized for poor service and they shouldn’t be allowed to increase their freight rates when there’s a backlog and bumper crops. He says another possible solution includes the use of arbitration.
Legislation is being introduced in the U-S Senate to address the problem, while lawmakers from South Dakota and Minnesota are calling on the U-S-D-A to conduct an economic analysis of rail service challenges facing agricultural shippers. Crude oil production is bounding in the U-S. Five years ago, rail cars hauled 11-thousand loads of crude oil, while last year, it was 400-thousand rail car loads of crude. Supporters of the stalled Keystone X-L oil pipeline say if the project were greenlighted, it could be carrying huge quantities of crude, freeing up more trains to haul grain.
