The Mississippi River \u2014 the immense, quiet highway that courses down the middle of America, moving critical food, wood, coal and steel supplies to global markets \u2014 is shrinking from drought, forcing traffic to a crawl at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n
With water levels at record lows, barges have run aground, causing traffic jams as boats wait for the US Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a path through the shallows. The problem has been building for months. Summer brought meager rain to much of the Plains and Midwest. Now it\u2019s harvest time, when farmers bring in their grains and other crops, send them to market, and lay down fertilizer before the winter snows. The shriveled Mississippi has forced them to seek alternatives, all of them more expensive, like moving soybeans by rail to the Gulf Coast or shipping everything through distant West Coast ports. That will inevitably increase pressure on global food prices at a time when Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has already sent them soaring.<\/p>\n
The river is \u201clow, been low and not getting filled anytime soon \u2013 so a bad situation getting worse,\u201d said Jeremy Jack, who just harvested his crops on 11,500 acres of land in the Mississippi Delta. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any soybean storage. Beans are in places where they shouldn\u2019t be and losing quality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Mississippi is shrinking from drought \u2013 increasing pressure on global food prices at a time when Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has already tightened supply.<\/p>\n Read The Big Take https:\/\/t.co\/W5rbORTIjk<\/a><\/p>\n — Bloomberg CityLab (@CityLab) November 10, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n