Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
This 20-barge flotilla will be pushed by Ingram towboats from the Upper Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico before the corn and soybeans in the cover-top barges and the metallic ore and shredded rubber in the open barges will be exported overseas.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
A look inside one of the covered corn barges in the flotilla. This barge, which has a fiberglass top that protects the grain from the weather, is holding 1,600 tons of corn.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
First mate Tyler Banicki stands atop a corn barge on a 20-barge flotilla headed to the Gulf of Mexico. To the right, Captain Ed Henleben checks out the Mississippi River. The R. Clayton McWhorter towboat in the rear will push these barges down river.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
Experienced deckhand Billy Vanhorn catches hold of a rope before we check out an empty barge.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
This tank barge carries liquids, like soybean oil, diesel fuel, petroleum and gas.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
One of the smaller tugs that pushes barges into rectangular units in harbors along the Mississippi.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
Grain barges are between 195 and 200 feet long and 35 feet wide.
While the U.S. remains the world’s biggest supplier of corn, American farmers will lose a portion of the global corn market this year.
The Midwest drought devastated the normally robust corn harvest, which has led to higher corn prices and plummeting corn stocks. In a normal year, the U.S. exports more than 1 billion bushels of corn to markets worldwide, but with low domestic supply it’s a tough year for corn exporters – the USDA predicts U.S. corn exports will be at a 40-year low this year.
Harvest Public Media reporter Abbie Fentress Swanson pauses on the fourth floor of a tug pushing a load that's almost a quarter mile long down the Mississippi River.
I left my house in Columbia, Mo., at 5:30 a.m. Thursday to make it to the Ingram Barge Co.'s Upper Mississippi River office by 8:30 am. I knew the three-hour drive had been worth it when I pulled up to the barge company’s office because the sturdy grey structure actually sits IN the Mighty Mississippi. I walked across an anchor barge that doubles as a pedestrian bridge to enter the office and passed by the R. Clayton McWhorter, a 45-foot tall, 140-foot long towboat with four decks.
Corn prices hit record highs this past August when they soared to over $8 a bushel, in large part because the drought hammering U.S. farms decimated corn stocks. Such prices were a windfall for Midwest farmers who actually had corn to sell. But could high corn prices hurt farmers if they drive buyers looking for cheaper grain and feed to South American farms?
Well, that’s the question some Midwest dairy farmers are debating now that the National Milk Producers Federation has taken a stand against the widespread practice of cutting off cow tails -- or tail docking. It started decades ago as a method to stop the spread of disease because the tails often becomes slimed with manure. Recent studies suggest the practice isn't necessarily effective, but many dairy farmers still employ the technique to avoid a face full of slimy cow tail.
It cost more to rent an acre of cropland or pasture land in 2012, according to new figures from the USDA.
The average cost to rent an acre of cropland in Missouri went up by 4 percent. Pastureland increased by 10 percent.
Ron Plain is an agricultural economics professor at the University of Missouri. He says rental rates and a land’s market value are both tied to the value of what is being produced on that land.
It’s been a while since Jeff Lampe turned on his windshield wipers. But even on a rainy day like this it’s easy to see the toll the drought has taken on his land.
There’s a new kind of gas on the market, with more ethanol in it than the gas we usually put in our cars. That’s beneficial for corn farmers who grow the corn that ethanol is made from and want more of it in your gas. But while the ethanol industry fought for years to bring this fuel to the market, now that they’ve won… good luck finding it. Even in Corn Country, pickings are slim.
The gravel road leading to Harrison Creek Farms is sandwiched between one field of withering corn, and one field of stunted soybeans. The drought has hurt farmers like Kenny Brinker who owns Brinker Farms and Harrison Creek Farms in Auxvasse, Mo.
“The hog farm we have here in Callaway County is what you call your standard feral to finish operation," he says. "We own the hogs ourselves."
