Last Friday, the Iowa Corn Growers Association held a regional meeting at Lock and Dam No. 10 in Guttenberg.
The facility has done its job for over 50 years. The tows of barges come to the lock and break into 600-foot sections as the change elevations depending on the water level. The time required to break a tow of barges and reassemble is significant and costly.
The Iowa Corn Growers Association said they want new infrastructure that will allow a 1,200-foot barge to lock through in one pass. The barge would cost millions, and there are many locks on interior rivers of the U.S. The posing question is whether or not we can maintain the old system and still be competitive in the world market.
?Certainly, we need to invest in our facilities here,? Northey said. ?There was a generation before us that spent a lot of dollars, to be able to invest in these river facilities that allow us to export. There are billions of dollars worth of product going down the river, and billions coming back as well. It?s not an easy thing to do; it?s not a cheap thing to do. In fact, we thought, a few times, we had something done with a word of pass from others.?
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey attended the Iowa Corn Growers rally at the Lock and Dam. Northey was a guest on Agri-Talk, a nationally syndicated radio talk show and also spoke to Ken Root about locks and dams and appointments to the USDA top jobs by the Trump administration.
