ASA Directors Bill Gordon and Kevin Scott headed to the BNSF Ag Rail Council meeting this week, where most of the morning discussion centered on historic basis levels for grains and whether the lack of timely service by BNSF over the past six months was the cause for a much wider basis level now compared to normal.

The semi-annual meeting allows agriculture product shippers to come together and discuss the influence rail service has on the industry.

During the meeting this week, BNSF Group Vice President Ag Products John Miller said, certainly some of the blame rests with BNSF's inability to provide timely service for last year’s large crop. He added BNSF was caught off guard last fall and not positioned as well as they could have been. The record cold winter also contributed to not being able to move crops as quickly as was needed.

According to Scott, attendees also learned of a study indicating South Dakota will be 200 million bushels short of storage capacity for this years expected crop. North Dakota, by contrast, will have about that much excess capacity and the rest of the country should be in good shape capacity.

Growers on the west coast said they were pleased to see more diverse rail traffic coming their way, but said this would mean investment in that area would also have to increase. BNSF agreed with and said in 2014 there would be at least $ 1.6 billion spent on just the northern route to the PNW. BNSF is spending $5 billion and adding over 500 new power units to its fleet this year and intend to hire 5,000 new employees to help with the extra volumes that are projected to occur on their line. Scott said he thinks they are making good progress in being able to satisfy the needs of all of their customers.

Scott said BNSF readily admits that they did not perform up to their customers’ expectations this past year and they seem to be working at meeting those needs in the future.The board also discussed the new railway laws being discussed in Washington, D.C and Scott said the general feeling was the regulations might stifle new investment in the rail line.

“I feel that the soy industry needs to have a close tie to BNSF and other railroads that handle our products,” Scott said. “We need to continue to relay our need of increasing volumes of products to reach an export market.  Good communication is key to our future success.”