Statement of Ron Warfield, Illinois Farm Bureau
Field Hearing
April 7, 2003
Dirksen Federal Building
Chicago, Illinois
“Illinois Transportation: The Crossroads of our Nation”
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and Senator Fitzgerald, I am
Ron Warfield, President of Illinois Farm Bureau, the state’s largest general
farm organization, representing nearly three out of every four Illinois
farmers. It is a pleasure to participate in this important field hearing in a
state that is truly the “Crossroads of our Nation.”
Illinoisans take
great pride in having access to a vast array of transportation systems that
promote commerce. Our highways,
railroads, rivers, and port facilities are essential to the efficient movement
of agricultural and food products that account for billions of dollars in
economic activity. However, as other
nations invest in their transportation systems, we appear to be losing one of
our major competitive advantages.
To remain a global
leader in trade, and for enhanced domestic market competitiveness, improvements
in our transportation infrastructure are needed. Specifically, we would like
the reauthorization of TEA 21 to include the following:
Highway trust
funds should be protected. Funds
collected from highway users for highway purposes should be spent on highway
projects. Highway users should not bear
the brunt of funding recreational trails or public transit systems.
We are very aware
of the discussions of highway tax revenues and the excise tax incentives for
ethanol’s impact on highway trust funds.
Senators Grassley and Baucus are working with a broad group of interests
to produce a compromise that retains dollars within the highway trust fund
while maintaining the incentive for ethanol.
We feel retention of the tax incentive is needed to foster an emerging
ethanol industry that can help our country become more energy independent.
Exports. Illinois
farmers export more than 40% of the grain they produce. But, the grain export business isn't nearly
as efficient as it could or should be.
We need to reduce
congestion around our nation’s ports.
The American Association of Port Authorities ranks Chicago and St. Louis
among the nation’s top 30 ports for total cargo volume. Unloading, loading and access to the ports
by road and rail should be a focus of improvement projects.
Rail competition
and capacity is critical to an efficient transportation infrastructure network.
Short rail lines need assistance in their efforts to move grain efficiently
when interfacing with major rail lines.
We see local elevators that set on a rail-side unable to meet minimum
rail-car drops because the class I rail lines find it difficult to service
short lines.
A part of the
infrastructure network that must play an equally important part of our system
but is not the focus of TEA 3, is our river system. The locks on the Illinois
and Upper Mississippi Rivers are nearly 70 years old. It takes far too long for barges to move through these antiquated
structures, boosting transportation costs.
Those delays are estimated to
cost Illinois farmers six cents per bushel of corn. Of course the more it costs
to transport grain, the less competitive we are against the likes of lower cost
South American farmers. The governments of Brazil and Argentina understand this
and have made transportation system improvements a national priority.
Despite the
delays, barges are the most efficient means of transportation in the
Midwest. One barge tow can transport
more than 20-thousand tons of grain - about the same as the capacity of 870
semi-trucks. More barges mean fewer trucks, less congestion, less wear and tear
on our highways, and cleaner air.
Farm Bureau
supports 1200-foot locks on the Illinois River at Peoria and LaGrange and at
five lower sites on the Mississippi. We
are working with other farm organizations, the shipping industry and organized
labor to build a broad grassroots base of support needed to accomplish our
goal. If we succeed, it will create
thousands of construction jobs for many years and benefit farmers and our
nation for decades to come.
Before I finish,
I’d like to share a story that demonstrates the need for investment in our
nation’s transportation system. Three
years ago, Illinois Farm Bureau sent a delegation to China. They reported back that the transportation
infrastructure in China was so undeveloped that it was cheaper to import corn
from the United States into southern China than to ship it from the northern
part of China. And northern China was a
major corn exporter! We believed a
situation like this could never happen in the United States, until now.
Loads of South
American soybeans are now being imported into South Carolina, because they are
cheaper than the beans we can ship by rail or ocean-going barges from the Midwest.
That tells me our
system needs a fix.
Thank you for the
opportunity to provide testimony today.
We look forward to working with you, the committee and Senator
Fitzgerald to address these issues.