Shipping shortage keeps corn on ground

~ Barges at New Orleans are being unloaded but aren't being brought back north.

Hurricanes Rita and Katrina have disrupted the barge transportation system, leaving area grain elevators and dealers with no other option but to store corn on the ground.

For several weeks, Cargill Inc. has been piling corn on the ground because there's a shortage of barges to ship it down the Mississippi River and grain elevators are full.

At its Buffalo Island location near Charleston, Mo., Cargill has approximately 600,000 bushels of corn on the ground. A tarp covers the grain, and fans are placed at various locations along the piles to suck in cooler air.

In Paul Thell's five years as farm service group manager for Cargill, he's never seen grain stored on the ground in Southeast Missouri.

"It's a unique situation," Thell said. "There have been some guys here 20 years, and they've never seen this done."

While it's being done now, storing corn on the ground can be problem.

"There is a possibility that the grain could be damaged," Thell said. "But the cooler temperatures should help."

Storing grain on the ground is a common practice farther north, where typically cooler temperatures keep the grain from deteriorating.

Russ Allen Mothershead II, manager of Midwest Grain and Barge Co. in Cape Girardeau, said storing grain on the ground is a last resort. But with the corn harvest nearly over, full grain elevators and the shortage of barges, no other option is left.

"The grain is being loaded into barges and sent down to the Gulf for exportation," Thell said. "But right now all of the barges are being unloaded and not being brought back up the river. Our available barge freight is very tight right now."

Cargill had a barge loading grain at its Buffalo Island location Wednesday, but managers weren't sure when the next empty barge would arrive.

Mothershead describes the situation as a "traffic jam."

"It's taking some time to get things running again and to get some of the empty barges back up north," he said.

Since last year, barge rates have nearly doubled and farmers are receiving a lower price for their produce.

At Midwest Grain and Barge, the cost of a bushel of corn has been anywhere from $1.50 to $1.55 in the past five days; last year at this time it was going for $1.85 per bushel, Mothershead said.

Farmers are currently in the middle of soybean harvest. Local grain elevator managers are hoping things along the Mississippi River return to normal soon; if not, they will be looking for an alternative storing method for the soybeans. Thell said soybeans can't survive being stored on the ground.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson asked President Bush Tuesday to work to resolve the barge shortage.

"Transportation and storage costs to our producers have skyrocketed," Emerson said. "Farmers who rely upon the Mississippi River to transport their harvest to port have been directly affected by these disasters."

According to the National Grain and Feed Association, the Mississippi River is responsible for 55 percent to 65 percent of the U.S. raw grain exports.

"We normally would be sending these crops down-river to a thriving, active port," Emerson said. "Right now, however, New Orleans is at a fraction of its capacity and barges are at a premium."

Emerson requested in her letter to the president that the U.S. Department of Agriculture consider providing assistance to barge companies for the transportation of barges.

jfreeze@semissourian.com