Grain exporters plead with Biden, Vilsack to address container imbalances
The Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance joined 70 other agriculture associations in an urgent plea to President Joe Biden for intervention into the container shipping crisis that has severely injured food and other United States ag and forestry exports that international customers are depending on.
In the letter sent Feb. 24, the SSGA requested that provisions available to the Federal Maritime Commission via the Shipping Act and other government tools “be immediately applied to stem the current ocean carrier practices that are so damaging to our agricultural products.”
Darwin Rader, SSGA’s secretary, treasurer and competitive shipping action team chair, said, “U.S. agricultural exporters’ access to international markets is being jeopardized by this unprecedented dysfunction and cost of ocean transportation services, which includes unreasonable and unjust practices such as the rejection of U.S. agricultural cargo by ocean carriers that are shipping empty containers back overseas to keep up with the high demand for U.S.-bound imported goods.”
“The only way to get out of this is for ocean carriers to return to previous levels of taking containerized exports out of the U.S. instead of such a high percentage of empty containers,” he said. “There’s a lot of frustration among U.S. exporters. We have to keep pushing as hard as we can for carriers to treat U.S. exporters fairly to help restore the balance of trade.”
In October, SSGA was one of the first national agricultural associations to shine a light on the disruption of the food supply chain and other critical problems facing containerized ag exports after members began to be informed that some ocean carriers were suspending containerized and other overseas ag shipments.
Earlier this month, SSGA representatives had the opportunity to give testimony to the FMC, along with other national ag organizations. And a week ago, FMC announced it had issued an information demand to ocean carriers and marine terminal operators to answer questions about policies and practices that have contributed to this crisis.
The letter to Biden, organized by the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, points out that ocean carriers are enjoying their most profitable period in decades, “charging unprecedented freight rates (and) imposing draconian fees on our exporters and importers,” while potentially irreversible damage is being done to the U.S. companies that ship containerized agricultural products.
The letter was also sent to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed Feb. 24, along with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Council of Economic Advisors Chair Cecilia Rouse and Federal Maritime Commissioner Michael Khouri.
