FARGO, N.D. — The furious pace of energy exploration in North Dakota is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been held up by a vast new movement of oil by rail, leading to millions of dollars in agricultural losses and slower production for breakfast cereal giants like General Mills.
The backlog is only going to get worse, farmers said, as they prepared this week for what is expected to be a record crop of wheat and soybeans.
"If we can't get this stuff out soon, a lot of it is simply going to go on the ground and rot," said Bill Hejl, who grows soybeans, wheat and sugar beets in the town of Casselton, about 20 miles west of here.
littlejoe said:"If we can't get this stuff out soon, a lot of it is simply going to go on the ground and rot,"
suggest you don't always drink the koolaid, dopey---I've piled more grain on the ground than you've read about.
mow it. harrow and lightly roll--for clean pickup. nothing under it-- if you do, water will pool you want it to perk right thru. stack it as high as possible and don't open the pile till you're ready to haul it away. and get maybe 2% losses. which you can scrape up and sell to timmie hortons to make coffee outa. I'm gonna send you down to help whitey and loopy douche out that storage unit---pack yer sh*t
littlejoe said:"If we can't get this stuff out soon, a lot of it is simply going to go on the ground and rot,"
suggest you don't always drink the koolaid, dopey---I've piled more grain on the ground than you've read about.
mow it. harrow and lightly roll--for clean pickup. nothing under it-- if you do, water will pool you want it to perk right thru. stack it as high as possible and don't open the pile till you're ready to haul it away. and get maybe 2% losses. which you can scrape up and sell to timmie hortons to make coffee outa. I'm gonna send you down to help whitey and loopy douche out that storage unit---pack yer sh*t
Rail car shortage has strangulation hold on barley marketing
The vast backlog of rail cars has forced those grain handlers dealing in malting barley contracts to focus on moving their contracted bushels, and as a result pretty much suspended any open market malting barley action.
"We are 1,700 cars behind on rail cars," said Kayla Burkhart, a grain broker for Sun Prairie Grain in Minot, N.D. "We are concentrating so much on getting our contracted malt barley moved that we aren't buying any open market barley at this time. Prices have been pretty stagnant, even with the slight upturn in the other grains. It's been pretty quiet on the malt barley front."
Many of the elevators have turned to trucks to ship contracted malting barley, but aren't able to move the volume needed to clean out the 2013 crop in an orderly fashion.
And, according to Burkhart, some of the malting locations have come close to having to scale back operations due to a lack of malting barley supplies and had to rely on truck shipments to keep them running. As a result, truck freight is getting hard to find.
And although the railroads say the situation is going to get better, at least in the case of Sun Prairie Grain, which is on the Canadian Pacific line, it actually has gotten worse every month, Burkhart noted.
"Our oldest single car orders now go back to Nov. 5 right now," she said. "They are a little bit better with unit train shipments, but we don't have the capacity to ship unit trains from any of our malting barley facilities and most of the maltsters aren't able to handle a unit train on their end. Instead, we need to rely on single car orders, and every single car order that we get goes to barley."
The situation has been frustrating for growers as well.
"They really want to get their barley hauled in, and we would like to see them be able to do that," Burkhart said. "But that's pretty tough to do right now when you don't have any place to put it."
Feed barley movement is also very limited, but in this case it's the lack of any U.S. export news that's keeping a lid on prices.
In the latest USDA Feed Outlook Report issued on March 12, it was projected that global barley trade for the current marketing year will increase 0.5 million tons from what was estimated last month to 20.7 million. Australia, with increased production, is forecast to ship 5.5 million tons of barley, up 0.5 million this month. That will make Australia the world's largest feed barley exporter this year, pulling ahead of the European Union.
Import projections are increased this month for China, up 0.3 million tons to 2.8 million; Algeria, up 0.1 million to 0.5 million; Turkey, up 0.1 million tons to 0.2 million; and Morocco, up slightly.
Despite the lack of any fresh export news from USDA, the Feed Outlook Report did raise the U.S. barley farm price range by a dime on the low end resulting in a 5-cent increase in the projected midpoint to $6.10 per bushels. USDA said the increase in the forecast all barley price resulted from recently higher prices reported for feed barley.
Elevator spot cash prices at local elevators averaged around $3.20 a bushel for feed barley and the average offering price for malting barley was $4.25 a bushel, but very little trade was noted for both classes.
A study conducted by North Dakota State University found that rail congestion could cost farmers in the state more than $160 million because the grain glut depressed local prices: $66.6 million in lost wheat, corn and soybean revenue from January to mid-April and an expected $95.4 million more in losses if their remaining inventory gets stranded.
At Southwest Grain, a 3,500-member farm cooperative granary based in Taylor, North Dakota, general manager Delane Thom worries there will be no hopper cars at his three loading terminals as the winter wheat harvest starts to come in.
Railroad BNSF has yet to deliver about 500 cars that he was promised in February and March, Thom said.
"All you have to do is look out the window to see all the tanker trains going by taking up track space," Thom said.
The 30-year-old granary has 9 million bushels of grain in storage, mostly milling wheat and durum. When BNSF does send a 100-car train, it takes only two days for nearby farmers to replace the 350,000 bushels it carries off.
hypocritexposer said:A study conducted by North Dakota State University found that rail congestion could cost farmers in the state more than $160 million because the grain glut depressed local prices: $66.6 million in lost wheat, corn and soybean revenue from January to mid-April and an expected $95.4 million more in losses if their remaining inventory gets stranded.
At Southwest Grain, a 3,500-member farm cooperative granary based in Taylor, North Dakota, general manager Delane Thom worries there will be no hopper cars at his three loading terminals as the winter wheat harvest starts to come in.
Railroad BNSF has yet to deliver about 500 cars that he was promised in February and March, Thom said.
"All you have to do is look out the window to see all the tanker trains going by taking up track space," Thom said.
The 30-year-old granary has 9 million bushels of grain in storage, mostly milling wheat and durum. When BNSF does send a 100-car train, it takes only two days for nearby farmers to replace the 350,000 bushels it carries off.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/14/us-usa-farms-railroads-analysis-idUSBREA4D0QE20140514
loomixguy said:Too bad nobody is interested in building a pipeline...
Oldtimer said:loomixguy said:Too bad nobody is interested in building a pipeline...
I agree- give all those Nebraska Nimby's hell... Pipeline would be 3/4ths done if it wasn't for them...
Jane Kleeb & The Keystone Pipeline - (excerpt) To the leaders of the larger climate-change movement, the group's work in Nebraska has turned the tide against the Keystone XL. Bill McKibben, one of the intellectual leaders of the movement, told me that the Cornhusker uprising was one of the first moments he thought they could actually win the larger pipeline fight. "There's no question that that moment happened because of the work Jane was doing," he said. Kenny Bruno, who has coordinated many of the groups involved in the movement, went even further. "Without Jane and a few other people, without their organizing and education on the route, that pipeline would have been built already."
Oldtimer said:loomixguy said:Too bad nobody is interested in building a pipeline...
I agree- give all those Nebraska Nimby's hell... Pipeline would be 3/4ths done if it wasn't for them...
Larrry said:ok lets assume you salvage all the grain that you pile on the ground.
What does that do to the farmer and his cash flow. A little hard to pay bills with grain in a pile on the ground.
Besides you say you lose 2%, then add that to the extra cost of piling it on the ground. One year here the local elevator docked the farmers 10% on everything they piled on the ground
Whitewing said:Anyone notice that LJ has done it all, knows it all, and can do it better than anyone else?
I'm thinking OT named his dick, Little Joe.
Mike said:Larrry said:ok lets assume you salvage all the grain that you pile on the ground.
What does that do to the farmer and his cash flow. A little hard to pay bills with grain in a pile on the ground.
Besides you say you lose 2%, then add that to the extra cost of piling it on the ground. One year here the local elevator docked the farmers 10% on everything they piled on the ground
Yea, it's pretty stupid to say it's perfectly OK and not losing anything by piling it on the ground. :roll:
Whitewing said:Anyone notice that LJ has done it all, knows it all, and can do it better than anyone else?
I'm thinking OT named his dick, Little Joe.
