With US agricultural freight expected to increase by 1.5%/year over the next two decades, continued investment in inland waterways, rail and rural truck routes is required to ensure efficient exports and reliable seasonal movements, according to the US Department of Transportation (UDOT)’s latest National Freight Strategic Plan (NFSP) reported by World Grain.
Agriculture is one of the largest users of the US freight network with corn, soyabeans and wheat dominating those volumes, according to the 2026 update of the plan.
The report’s freight growth projections assumed continued growth in domestic consumption and export demand, driven by population growth, income growth and productivity gains, the 11 June World Grain report said.
“Since the publication of the first NFSP in late 2020, the global and domestic freight landscapes have undergone significant changes that affect how goods move across the United States,” USDOT said.
“While some of these changes were already underway before 2020, recent years have seen accelerated trends, introduced new uncertainties and tested the resilience of the multimodal freight system.”
According to the plan, freight transport was concentrated in a small set of high-volume corridors and gateways, with trucks handling local and regional moves, while railways and barges carried the bulk of long-haul grain and oilseed flows to coastal terminals.
Barges moved about 44% of US grain exports in 2022, railways moved about 45% and trucks transporting the remainder.
Bulk commodity export was dependent on the Mississippi River system, the Illinois waterway and the Columbia-Snake River system, which linked agricultural areas to export regions.
About 60% of US grain exports travelled by barge on the Mississippi system to Gulf elevators, while 60% of US wheat exports passed through the Columbia-Snake River system in the Pacific Northwest.
The New Orleans port region accounted for the largest share of US agricultural exports by tonnage, including about 60% of soyabeans and 78% of corn exports.
Barge traffic in the Pacific Northwest was growing slightly faster than the rest of the system.
Waterborne forecasts for the Columbia-Snake River system forecast a 2% annual growth rate – double the pace of the recent historical rate – driven in part by agricultural exports.
“Highly cost-effective transport via inland rivers keeps US agricultural commodities competitive on the global market despite our higher labour and production costs relative to major competitors,” the plan said.
Price increases of even a few percentage points could significantly reduce the ability to export American agriculture, it said.
“A decrease in agricultural export volumes would subsequently reduce the collection of user fees and impact on the capacity to reinvest in the system, potentially leading to a cycle of disinvestment,” the plan noted.
Ports and other international trade gateways would need to be more agile and data-driven as production increased and import-export flows became more balanced.
“As more US goods flow outward – particularly agricultural commodities, energy products and manufactured goods – ports must effectively manage landside container positioning, chassis supply, cold chain access and multimodal connectivity.”
According to the plan, agricultural freight patterns were shifting due to the growth in domestic soyabean crushing capacity and domestic use of soyabeans and soyabean byproducts.
Since 2023, at least nine new or expanded soyabean crushing plants, began operations in the USA, with more projects announced or under development, raising expected domestic crushing capacity from approximately 2.4bn bushels in 2024 to almost 2.9bn bushels by 2027.
Projected increases in volumes were expected to lead to more inbound truck and rail movements of soyabeans into Midwestern and Plains processing clusters and more outbound shipments of meal, oil and co-products from those clusters to domestic feed mills, food manufacturers and export terminals, rather than direct farm-to-elevator export flows.
Investments were also expected to help support inland waterway traffic volumes.
