ST. LOUIS, Mo. — For the second year in a row, the Lower Mississippi River is so low that barge companies have been lightening loads so barges don’t get hung up on the river bottom. The companies also are running shorter arrays of barges to navigate bends in the river. This is occurring as farmers in the whole Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river systems are harvesting crops for shipment to New Orleans and foreign destinations. The shallows are most serious south of St. Louis and getting worse with persistent droughts throughout the Upper Midwest. Ironically the Upper Mississippi from St. Louis north to Minneapolis and St. Paul is open as usual because dams, locks and dredging keep navigation channels at a depth of nine feet. Even so, crops from the Upper Midwest are piling up in elevators and fields because of the Lower Mississippi bottleneck.
Agricultural economics
For Midwest farmer, the alternatives to shipping by barge are more expensive. The usual 15-barge to 17-barge array down the Mississippi carries the equivalent to 1,000 trucks. Rail also is mucch more expensive. And with smaller loads on the barge fleets, cargoes southward from St. Louis are 77% more than the three-year average.
Geopolitics and global hunger
There are geopolitical implications for hunger. Almost two-thirds of U.S. corn, soybean and wheat exports are taken by barge to New Orleans for transoceanic shipment. Meanwhile, grain from Ukraine, also a major global breadbasket, has been slowed out of the Black Sea ports by the Russian war.
Wild seasonal fluctuations
Drought late last summer closed the Lower Mississippi. Hundreds of barges and a few tourist cruise boats ran aground on the river bottom. Stuck in the mud, they blocked mile after mile of the usual navigation channels, especially at difficult sharp bends.
Farmers stymied: Capacity narrows for barge shipping
Grounded, stranded. Barges aground last summer on lower Mississippi. Appears to be happening again.
This spring, ironically, an unusually heavy snowpack in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin quickly melted and flooded the Upper Mississippi dam and lock system and interrupted shipping three weeks, delaying the start of the shipping season. Although the floodwaters receded, they left giant mounds of underwater sediment at critical points that kept the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers busy dredging. Of necessity, dredges were in the way of normal barge traffic as they sucked muck out of navigation channels.
Earlier: Drought grips 99% of Minnesota