(Reported By Roger Fillion And Chris Walsh in the Rocky Mountain News on August 24)
Trains can’t meet demand to haul it to ports for export
PAOLI, CO – The 40-foot pyramid of wheat standing beside the grain elevator in this tiny northeastern town sits just yards from the railroad track.
But the hard red winter wheat – valued at $1.8 million – is stranded. Trains and trucks aren’t readily available to haul the grain away from this burg, 160 miles northeast of Denver.
The wheat pyramid, visible from a mile away, is vulnerable to a heavy rain. There’s no room in the 1.8 million-bushel elevator, already full of wheat.
“The trains are running 10 to 15 days late from when they were ordered. There’s a shortage of trucks,” said Steve Bahnsen, general manager of the Paoli Farmers Co-op, which owns the elevator.
Farm industry officials say a banner wheat crop in Colorado plus a limited number of rail cars and trucks to move that wheat is creating woes for grain elevator operators, who have purchased the wheat from farmers.
With elevators full, operators have had to store excess wheat outside. But rain can spoil the grain.
What’s more, the millet harvest is just around the corner. Millet is a key ingredient in birdseed, and Colorado is the No. 1 producer of proso millet.
“You cannot put it outside,” Bahnsen said of millet. “Millet just runs like water.”
To add to the problem, the upcoming corn harvest is expected in a matter of weeks.
“We’ll put as much (of the corn) in the elevator as we can, and the overflow will go back where the wheat is right now on the ground,” Bahnsen said.
Colorado farmers produced an estimated 87.7 million bushels of winter wheat this year, the most since 1999.
Darrell Hanavan, executive director of the Colorado Association of Wheat Growers, estimates that 10 million bushels of wheat are sitting on the ground.
“The elevator operator is really exposed financially right now,” Hanavan said.
“They own it,” he said of the wheat. “As long as it’s on the ground, there’s potential for spoilage.”
On Wednesday, Gov. Bill Ritter declared a disaster emergency for wheat farmers and grain elevator operators.
The governor also signed an executive order temporarily suspending rules that bar vehicles with farm license plates from being hired to move wheat to railroad loading points, storage facilities or to market.
In announcing the order, Ritter’s office noted that many of the trucking and rail carriers formerly serving Colorado’s agricultural markets have gone out of business because of drought, low commodity prices and high fuel costs.
“Our immediate concern is to get the wheat off the ground,” said Kelly Spitzer, grain merchandiser for Tempel Grain in Wiley, which operates 13 grain elevators in southeastern Colorado.
Spitzer estimated Tempel Grain had 1.8 million bushels of wheat on the ground as of Thursday morning.
Tim Larsen, senior international marketing specialist for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said 22,000 rail cars would be needed to haul the stored wheat inventory from the grain elevators. That’s double the number of cars used last year.
Eighty percent of Colorado’s wheat crop is exported overseas, and rail cars are needed to transport the wheat to ports for export.
Union Pacific Corp. spokesman James Barnes said the carrier is experiencing “record demand” for rail cars in the face of Colorado’s wheat harvest.
He said the carrier is seeing double the demand it would ordinarily see now. “At this point, we are doing our best to meet current demand,” Barnes said.
Mark Baker, superintendent of the Paoli Farmers Co-op and pastor at a nearby church, sees the bright side of the bumper wheat crop following years of drought.
“God had his hands on this crop. The moisture came at all the right times,” he said. “If you’re going to have a problem, this is the one to have.”