Heading into 2026, U.S. agriculture faces questions about transportation challenges. Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, said no one likes uncertainty.
“Large industries like agriculture and supply chains that serve industries like agriculture, they don’t like uncertainty, and there has been a considerable amount of that, of course, when it comes to things like export markets, and things like origin of manufacturing for ship building, and whether we’re going to penalize ships being built in China or not. There’s a lot of that uncertainty that really had an impact on supply chains.”
One of the biggest challenges has been the consistently low water levels in the Mississippi River.
“One of them that continues to be an area of concern for us is that we have year four of low water conditions on the Mississippi River, and that’s certainly had a negative impact on barge transportation. We’re kind of outside our main concentrated, intense window of barge shipping right now, particularly on the Upper Mississippi River, but something that’s continued to be an area of concern.”
Steenhoek said one of the biggest transportation positives in 2025 was railroad shipping.
“Rail service was pretty commendable throughout the course of the year, and so that certainly has been beneficial to us also. You know, when you’ve got all this uncertainty, when it comes to our export markets, what you want is for your supply chain to not be adding insult to injury. You want it to be operating as efficiently as possible, because you don’t want one more cost being added to the overall transaction. And so, you obviously celebrate those occasions where the supply chain is operating well. But then, when you have issues like those on the Mississippi River, you know it’s obviously an area for concern.”