Moving grain, in the main, will not be a pain.

That is the outlook for the 2015 harvest season, and a welcome one after years of saturated rail capacity that snarled attempts to move the bounty of the farms of Minnesota and surrounding states.

Even with the prospect of record corn and soybean harvests in the offing, the Associated Press reported this weekend, the grain trains are expected to move more smoothly and predictably this time around.

Credit goes in as many directions as the grain itself: to the farm state legislators who leaned on the railroads; to the railroads themselves, who say they have spent billions to expand their networks; and to the expanded pipelines out of North Dakota’s Bakken fields.

That last is a crucial point. It’s not that North Dakota’s oil producers are slowing production because of the lower price of oil. Indeed, production has been stable, about 1.2 million barrels a month. It’s that less than half that production is leaving by rail now.

Shipping oil by rail was at the root of the massive problems afflicting grain shipments the last two years. The issue reached from Montana to Illinois and south as far as Kansas. Trains arrived at elevators as much as four weeks late, with grain piled on the ground outside overstuffed elevators.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a major rail carrier in North Dakota, says it has spent $1 billion on capacity in that state alone since 2013. While the proof of improvement awaits this autumn, the signs out of North Dakota, where the spring wheat harvest is in full swing, are positive. Trains are on time, if not early.

It’s just another example of an argument this space has long and often made: Investing in transportation pays off.

 

— Mankato Free Press, Sept. 1