He cited specific examples where decreased railroad competition has bumped up shipping prices for producers sending grain to the Pacific Northwest for export. Every penny in shipping cost that results from a lack of meaningful competition is borne by farmers in the form of lower grain prices at the elevators where they sell their grain. We believe meaningful competition among rail service providers would help alleviate this problem. In addition to my duties as North Dakota Farm Bureau president, I am a grain producer and custom combine operator in north central North Dakota. I am appearing today representing the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation's largest general farm organization, with nearly five million Farm Bureau families across the country.
Farmers have every reason to be concerned about competitive transportation.
It is impossible for the relatively small number of Americans who farm to feed the remaining majority of Americans who do not, in the absence of a viable transportation system. Washington has failed to create competitive transportation options by reforming the outdated Jones Act, which effectively prohibits coastwise ocean transportation of agricultural products and allows operators of a small and inefficient U.S. flag fleet to maintain a monopoly on such transportation. Environmental advocates insist that we cannot expand and modernize the waterway transportation infrastructure on the Upper Mississippi. Still other environmental advocates insist that the Corps of Engineers destroy the waterway navigation infrastructure that is critical to the competitiveness of grain producers in the Northwest. Finance Docket No.