U.S. agricultural producers rely on a transportation network that is reliable, efficient, and safe. We at Barchart also believe that agriculture depends on efficient transportation. With the integration of data from the USDA’s Grain Transportation dataset into our database for commodity fundamentals and statistics, we are making it easier for farmers, grain shippers, and commodity traders to stay on top of the associated transportation costs.

The newly released transportation data empowers users to not only access the prices of the different transportation methods but also analyze the historical and current quantity of grains transported over different modes of transport.

Grain generally flows south from the relatively production-rich areas of the Midwest to export ports in Louisiana and feed markets in the southeast. Barges traversing the series of locks and dams on the Mississippi River System deliver approximately 90 percent of the grain exported through the Mississippi Gulf port region. Thus, the movement of grain barges gives a sense of barge grain shipments heading south from the Upper Mississippi River, Illinois River, Ohio River, and Arkansas River.

The U.S. Inland Waterway System utilizes a percent-of-tariff system to establish barge freight rates. One use case is to convert the grain barge tariff rates to dollars per ton barge rate in order to calculate the cost of grain transportation over the Mississippi river system while analyzing the grain quantity transported during the same period.

cmdtyView by Barchart enables you to seamlessly integrate the data into your workflow with onDemand access to transportation data and many more. Our cmdtyView Excel Add-In allows users to get the historical commodity prices in Excel and build off sophisticated analytical frameworks that help in tracking and improving their bottom-line.

If you have product ideas or want to learn more about any of our services drop us a line at cmdty@barchart.com or contact us on our website.