Drought stifles barges, and railroads can't meet demand

A towboat in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 2022. Low water levels have caused some barges to
get stuck in the muddy river bottom. (Photo by Rogelio V. Solis, The Associated Press)

Beginning in the 1930s, the Mississippi River has been the main shipping method for U.S. commodities. "From the Waterhead in Minnesota down to the port in New Orleans, barges deliver over 60 percent of corn and soybean exports and around $100 billion worth of cargo every year," writes Luke Goldstein of The American Prospect. Now facing extreme drought, the river's transport power has been bottlenecked, "leaving farmers and other shippers searching for alternative options to get their goods to port before winter."

With the Mississippi congested, shippers pivoted to move goods by rail; however, Goldstein writes: "The railroads don’t have adequate capacity to serve these shippers, in large part because of recent downsizing measures, including worker layoffs. . . . Consolidation in rail has provided windfalls for financiers at the expense of nationwide rail service. Under relentless pressure from Wall Street to maximize short-term profits, the railroads have turned to the management regime known by the perversely Orwellian term 'precision scheduled railroading.' PSR entails cutting operating budgets and reducing service lines to charge monopoly prices on shippers."

For shippers, time is running out. Illinois farmer Ken Hartman, former chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, told Goldstein, “Many of our farmers are between a rock and a hard place, either faced with taking losses or paying storage at elevators until the water rises back up."

"The Mississippi River drought is yet another example of the need for rebuilding rail capacity in preparing for the climate crisis," Goldstein reports. "Transportation flexibility can certainly help mitigate the economic havoc of droughts, floods or other extreme weather conditions. Fortifying our national rail system would also help curb the overreliance on trucking, a major greenhouse gas emitter."

Using a calculation from the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit focused on energy and climate modeling, Goldstein writes, "A fairly modest investment in electrifying freight railroads could reduce carbon emissions by 39 percent."