Kansas farmers need a fighter to address rail merger
Kansas farmers know competition matters, and when railroads compete, farmers get better service and better prices. When competition disappears, farmers lose. That is why I oppose the proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger.
I am not alone. The American Farm Bureau Federation, National Grain and Feed Association, National Farmers Union, and members of Kansas’ congressional delegation have all raised serious concerns. When farm groups and Kansas leaders speak with one voice, Washington should listen.
Their concerns are simple: Kansas farmers will be forced to pay for an $85 billion merger being pushed by Wall Street that leaves them with fewer transportation options and higher prices.
Today, competition among railroads helps keep rates in check and incentivizes good service.
This merger would leave roughly 240 rail-served facilities in Kansas captive to the newly consolidated railroad, which will have every incentive to keep traffic on its own network and limit access for example to eastern markets that today are reached through competition between Norfolk Southern, CSX, and originating western carriers.
Fewer choices have never meant lower prices, and even Union Pacific has previously warned regulators that railroad mergers create incentives to route traffic onto a company’s own lines and away from competitors. In fact, Union Pacific is already facing a lawsuit today in Kansas alleging it worked to block competition from a smaller railroad.
Kansas workers also have a stake in this fight. Union Pacific employs more than 1,000 railroad workers in our state, and rural communities cannot afford to lose good-paying railroad jobs as a result of another major consolidation. More than seventy percent of workers represented by many different unions on the UP and NS railroads are opposing this merger.
I spent decades practicing medicine in Great Bend. The farmers, grain handlers, railroad workers, and small towns affected by this merger are not statistics to me. They are my neighbors.
That is why I am urging the Trump administration to oppose this merger. His administration has an opportunity to stand with farmers by making clear that rural America should not be sacrificed to these railroads and their investors’ appetite for consolidation.
Kansas farmers should not be forced to finance an $85 billion Wall Street merger through higher shipping costs and fewer choices so I oppose this merger, and I will keep fighting it.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
