Soy farmers have joined with other U.S. groups to call for an investigation into deteriorating services from the CSX Transportation Co. (CSXT), claiming they have resulted in critical plant shutdowns.
The groups–which included the American Soybean Association–penned a letter to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) last week, urging them to investigate and press CSXT for action. They have called for a plan to fix the harm operations are causing to customers who rely on its services.
“Farmers, ranchers, agribusinesses and the food industry rely heavily upon freight rail to move agricultural products from geographically diverse sources of production to domestic and export markets, as well as to provide critical farm inputs like fertilizer, seed and agricultural chemicals to producers,” the groups wrote in the letter. “Unfortunately, starting in June, a wide range and growing number of agricultural facilities and manufacturing plants dependent upon CSXT have experienced an alarming and precipitous degradation in rail service that worsened in July and shows no sign of abating.”
For several months, the groups claim, CSXT’s services have failed to meet statutory obligations, which have caused customers serious issues across several states. For soy growers, delays have supposedly led to reduced oilseed processing at a number of different plants and even gone so far as to cause critical plant shutdowns in some cases.