The designation by the Army Corps of Engineers of a multi-port area in the Quad Cities/Peoria/Quincy area of Illinois and Iowa has been supported by city officials, the regional economic development organization and terminal owners.
The Corn Belt Ports is made up of three new statistical port designations in the Quad Cities/Peoria/Quincy region; together they make up the nation’s largest inland port.
But there’s one group it benefits above all others, according to Bob Sinkler, former commander of the Rock Island Engineer District and now a senior adviser at Dawson & Associates in Hampton, Illinois: farmers. Sinkler has been a moving force behind the effort to consolidate the Corn Belt Ports and get them officially recognized.
Sinkler recently told High Plains Journal, “The Corn Belt Ports recognition has very little direct impact on the navigation industry.” He means that cargoes would have gone up or down subject to the same market forces regardless of the designation. Terminal operators would continue to operate their facilities as they had always done. But “[f]armers in the Corn Belt have a different view of things than the navigation industry,” Sinkler said. “The farmers want to be recognized for their contributions to the global and national economies. That is why the concept of the Corn Belt Ports is so important. They are the ones that work so hard to raise the grain and get it to market—or at least to a terminal or grain elevator.
“Tonnage has value, and for decades the freight tonnage contributions of the American farmer in the heart of the Corn Belt has been overlooked. The formal establishment of the Corn Belt Ports gives them a measured and documented U.S. recognized port of loading for their agricultural products. They have never had that before. And there was no real appreciation for how much was actually being shipped from the Corn Belt ports of loading.”
“The Corn Belt Ports is a very important identity for what used to be a ‘port shadow zone.’ The identity reinforces the contributions that the American farmer in the heart of the Corn Belt makes to the global and national economies. In some ways the Heart of the Corn Belt has been sort of cheated from having this identity in the past.”
David Murray can be reached at [email protected].
