USSEC's Global Opportunites program worked with the United Soybean Board to fund a study on the United States’ infrastructure and transportation system and its effects on U.S. soybean farmers. The checkoff funded study, “Farm to Market- A Soybean’s Journey,” analyzed how soybeans move from the farm gate to customers and highlighted the weaknesses found in the system along the way.
U.S. farmers depend on a 50-year-old highway system, a 70-year-old inland waterway system and a railway network built in the late 1800s to move their products from the fields to end users. This transportation system provided farmers a competitive advantage in the global market but growing evidence supports this advantage continues to be threatened by the deterioration of U.S. highways, bridges, rails, locks and dams.
“The entire transportation has been vital to the U.S. soy industry, not only in moving our products to domestic processors but also in delivering U.S. soy to our international customers as well,” said Dale Profit, soybean farmer from Van Wert, Ohio, and USB director. “Brazil has several proposed infrastructure projects that haven’t been completed yet, but if those improvements are made, it would put them on par with U.S. soybean farmers as far as transportation costs and we would lose that advantage.”