has left the Mississippi River so low that barge companies are reducing their loads just as Midwest farmers are preparing to harvest crops and send tons of corn and soybeans downriver to the Gulf of Mexico.
“We haven’t had rain here for several weeks so our crop size is shrinking,” Peterson said. “Unfortunately, that has taken care of part of the issue.”to New Orleans, where the corn, soybeans and wheat is stored and ultimately transferred to other ships. It’s usually an inexpensive, efficient way to transport crops, as a typical group of 15 barges lashed together carries as much cargo as about 1,000 trucks.
North of St. Louis, a series of locks and dams guarantees a 9-foot-deep channel as far north as Minneapolis-St. Paul. But that’s not the case in the lower Mississippi. Though floodwaters quickly receded, they left behind mountains of underwater sand, forcing the Corps of Engineers to “dredge like crazy” to clear out a shipping channel, said Tom Heinold, who commands the Corps’ Rock Island district spanning 312 miles of the Mississippi from northern Iowa south to Missouri.
Months of dry and warm weather have hit the Midwest hard, damaging crops in much of the region west of the Mississippi River. In Kansas, 40% of the soybean crop was reported in poor or very poor condition, with the same conditions for 40% of the corn crop in Missouri.