Soy growers and several other groups are urging the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to take action and find the causes for continually deteriorating rail service provided by the CSX Transportation Co. (CSXT).

The American Soybean Association, as part of the Ag Transporation Working Group, signed a letter to STB this week, encouraging them to press the CSXT for its plan to rectify the harm it has caused to its customers over the past few months and restore service to levels that comply with CSXT’s statutory obligations.

“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 state 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.”

Issues have been reported in multiple states. A key area of concern for soy growers is delays in train placements have led to reduced oilseed processing crush levels at numerous plants and/or resulted in critical plant shutdowns.