Bumper Beans Bound in Bottleneck
By Michael Danna and Bill Sherman
Farm Bureau News Staf Writers

BATCHELOR – It’s a blue-sky Monday at the Batchelor Grain Elevator as Joseph Wells steps gingerly over the top of a truckload of soybeans, pushing a shiny brass rod deep into the golden sea of beans.

Wells has been working since 7 a.m., having probed more than a dozen loads of soybeans, checking the quality and moisture content of what’s turning out to be a massive Louisiana soybean crop.

“I’ve never done this many this early,” Wells says, inching his way back across the trailer to the boom stand above the scale. “And just look at all those over there waiting. A lot of them have been waiting since Friday.”

A half-dozen18-wheelers loaded with soybeans sit in line, waiting their turn. Drivers stand idly by, some snacking on honey buns, others talking on cell phones. They’re no doubt talking to their farmers who want to know when they’ll be returning to the fields. “I just can’t tell you right now,” one driver is telling the person on the other end of the phone, not bothering to mask his exasperation.

The fact is, the highly anticipated soybean harvest has all but come to a grinding halt because the farm infrastructure is running out of storage space to hold bumper crops of wheat, corn, milo and now soybeans. Farmers who have on-farm storage have their bins filled to capacity, while local grain elevators like the one here are bursting at the seams.

“We’re full and we’ve been pretty much full for some time now,” laments Ray Guidry, manager of the Pointe Coupee elevator. “This is kind of the perfect storm of production, price and profit.”

Near record prices for corn, in the wake of increased ethanol production across the country, combined with bumper crops of wheat, milo and soybeans, which also saw much higher prices, had Louisiana producers cutting back on crops like cotton in favor of grain.

“There’s a tremendous amount of grain out there,” said David Bollich, grain marketing specialist for the Louisiana Farm Bureau. “It’s got to go somewhere.” The problem of just where to store all that grain prompted a recent meeting of about 30 farmers at the Pointe Coupee Farmers’ Co-op, located next door to the elevator. Farmers there said part of the problem stems from not only a bumper crop, but also limited delivery options at the Cargill Grain Elevator port facility located on the Mississippi River at Port Allen.

“They just don’t care,” said Avoyelles soybean grower J.K. Bordelon, adding that Cargill, with the largest storage capacity (seven million bushels) of any elevator along the river in Louisiana, has been slow to meet the needs of local grain producers who must move their crop out in a timely manner.

Please get us someone who can handle all this grain and listen to what our concerns are,” said George Lacour, a Pointe Coupee soybean producer.

The meeting, attended by Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry Bob Odom, also included state Sen. Rob Marionneaux, D-Livonia, state Rep. Don Cazayoux, D- New Roads and Jay Hardman, executive director of the Port of Greater Baton Rouge. While no one from the Cargill Port Allen facility attended the meeting, the company did release a statement about the situation from its Minneapolis, MN headquarters.

“We empathize with regional Louisiana soybean producers who, in today’s market, have limited options to deliver their soybeans,” according to the statement issued by David Feider, of Cargill Corporate Affairs. “However, we have been able to accept only a limited number of beans that do not meet export-grade quality, given current space and transportation challenges at our Baton Rouge facility. Cargill has long extended to regional bean producers the opportunity to contract their grain, and we have honored our contracts with all producers this harvest, partnering with area producers to handle record levels of corn, wheat and sorghum. We are doing our best working with soybeans producers in trying circumstances.”

Those words were of little comfort to soybean producer John Goode, who grew 1,000 acres of soybeans in north Pointe Coupee. One of Goode’s trucks had just returned from the Batchelor elevator after waiting nearly 72 hours to dump one truckload of soybeans.

“The local elevators are just not really equipped to handle the volume that we are having today and it’s been difficult all the way around.” Goode said. Goode said he’s seeing yields of nearly 60-plus bushels to the acre, with damage running only 2 percent. But everyday those beans sit in the field unharvested, the damage percentages only go up.

“It’s a great crop,” Goode said. “Now I’ve got to deliver it.”

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