As the USDA prepares to announce another near-record harvest, farmers in the upper Midwest can breathe a sigh of relief that plenty of train cars will be available to ship their grains to market, says the Associated Press.
The additional cars came from investments in track upgrades, farm-state political pressure and a slackening in demand for North Dakota oil. The recent oil and gas boom in North Dakota had exposed infrastructure and supply problems with the upper Midwest rail system. “It doesn’t take too much more on the tracks to really get things snarled up,” National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson told the AP.
“Only logical solution was to build a bigger rail network,” added Lochiel Edwards, a Montana grain farmer.
A year ago, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, told the New York Times, “This rail backlog is a national problem. The inability of farmers to get these grains to market is not only a problem for agriculture, but for companies that produce cereals, breads and other goods.”