Grounded Grain

Midwest harvest headache

When farmers complain, it is usually about Washington or the weather.

This year they have a different gripe: labor disputes are plaguing the nation's overburdened crop distribution system at a time when bin-busting harvests and a high export demand augur a booming farm economy. Since late August the United Transportation Union and the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks have halted operations on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, which serves 1,680 grain elevators in the Midwest. And for almost three months a strike by the American Federation of Grain Millers has closed the 13 huge grain elevators in the port of Duluth-Superior, stopping 10% of all U.S. grain exports.

President Carter declared last week that the strike against the Rock Island was causing severe economic disruption. This meant that he was able to invoke a 60-day cooling-off period under the National Labor Relations Act and send the strikers back to their jobs while a three-member emergency board reviews the dispute, although there were signs that the workers would refuse the order. At the same time, Carter requested that the Interstate Commerce Commission issue a "directed service order" telling other rail companies to operate Rock Island equipment over its rights-of-way. The grain millers' strike also appeared to be nearing a conclusion. At week's end five of the eight grain elevator operators struck by the millers had reached tentative agreements with the union, and bargaining with the others was continuing.

Hardest hit by the millers' walkout are the farmers in North Dakota, who ship more than 50% of their grain through Duluth. But farmers in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa are also affected. Lost sales are costing North Dakota farmers between $1 million and $4 million a day, and if the port is not opened before the end of the harvest, more than 200,000 bushels of grain will have to be stored on the ground. In the open, as much as 25% of the crop could be lost through damage during the winter. "It's just terrible," complains Richard Goldberg, president of Goldberg Feed & Grain in West Fargo, N. Dak. "I have contracts for sales through Duluth that I can't fill because there is no grain moving through here, and it's impossible to get transportation to other ports."

The agricultural transportation system in the U.S. is in badly rundown condition, with alternative routes so overburdened that they are unable to cope with any kind of unusual demand. Every year at harvest time, there is a severe shortage of hopper cars and boxcars for carrying grain. Meanwhile, many of the railroads that serve the nation's agricultural heartland are failing. The Rock Island, for example, is bankrupt and has been in receivership for the past four years. The strike resulted from its inability to pay clerks and transportation workers $9 million in retroactive pay.

Settlement of these two strikes will by no means solve the chronic crop-carrier problem. Says Jack Lambert, president of the Twin City (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Barge & Towing Co.: "We have scheduled every mode of transportation which moves our export grains to market. We've let our farm production and export demand far exceed our farm transportation system, and it's time we try to fix that system." The Administration and Congress have agreed on one long-range step to help. It is a ten-year, $500 million project to move grain-carrying barges more efficiently by improving locks and dams on the Mississippi River. Even that move, however, has been blocked in court by environmentalists and 21 railroads, which, despite then" own inability to handle the harvest peaks, will not bury their age-old feud with river traffic.

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