Low Levels Again on the Mississippi; Long-Term Infrastructure Remedies Needed
Back in drought-stricken 2022 and 2023, you heard Hoosier Ag Today report on low water levels on the Mississippi negatively impacting barge traffic and keeping your grain from where it needed to go. Things have been really quiet on that front this year until now, and it comes at a bad time right near harvest.
“Certainly, continuing to dredge would be helpful in the Lower Mississippi River,” says Jason Selking with Consolidated Grain and Barge in Southern Indiana. “There were recently some groundings that had occurred.”
According to Mike Steenhoek with the Soy Transportation Coalition, barge companies are responding to low water levels by announcing limits on draft and tow-size limitations. This will continue until more precipitation comes that way. Barge rates are higher as well.
That’s a shorter-term problem. Longer-term, Selking says farmers need to be chatting with lawmakers about infrastructure improvements.
“Maintaining the wonderful lock and dam system that we have. It’s been long-standing and has been doing a wonderful job for us since the 1960s, but at some point, we have to continue to maintain those locks so that they can be tried and true, as they have been, to provide us that known efficient and economical means of transportation.”
Selking says it’s important to have those crucial conversations with legislators to explain that the supply chain shouldn’t be an obstacle to profitability, but instead help facilitate it.
“Just emphasize their ability to have a sure movement of commodities. Whether that’s rail- we recently heard and witnessed some things that we were about to have with strikes in Canada- just to make sure that we continue to have a free and movable set of commodities throughout the U.S. from production to destination.”
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