Corn Belt Ports celebrate $2B investment, drive future growth

The fledgling Corn Belt Ports located in the heart of the grain belt are celebrating groundbreakings on more than $2 billion in lock and dam investments and seeking to drive growth in the nation’s top corn- and soybean-producing states. On Thursday, Oct. 19, Robert Sinkler, executive coordinating director of Corn Belt Ports – that includes […]

The fledgling Corn Belt Ports located in the heart of the grain belt are celebrating groundbreakings on more than $2 billion in lock and dam investments and seeking to drive growth in the nation's top corn- and soybean-producing states. On Thursday, Oct. 19, Robert Sinkler, executive coordinating director of Corn Belt Ports – that includes Quad Cities Lock & Dam 15 – shared details of the extensive early impact of a quartet of regional entities. He was among the speakers at this week’s Upper Mississippi River Conference at the Holiday Inn Rock Island.  Mr. Sinkler later joined a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Moline’s Western Illinois University riverfront campus for the opening of the fourth, and newest, of the Upper Mississippi River Ports regional offices. The mission of those regional offices is to promote sustainable, multi-purpose use of the Upper Mississippi to protect the supply chain integrity and be a focal point for advancing creation of a regional, port-based economic development cluster. They also will help ensure the regions are making climate-informed adjustments to its manmade and natural water resource infrastructure. For the Illinois Soybean Association (ISA), the creation of these federally recognized ports where none had existed is essential for the continued expansion of the state’s soybean market, its Public Policy Manager David Kubik said. His organization represents 43,000 soybean partners in Illinois alone and he shared the new ports’ impact on that industry during the river conference’s “Corn Belt Ports Best Kept Secrets” session. The annual conference is hosted by Davenport-based River Action.

Barge transport tops list

“Barge transportation is the most economical, the most fuel efficient and the safest mode of travel,” Mr. Kubik said. And the Mississippi River is crucial to the supply chain “because 90% of our grain is exported through the Mississippi Gulf port region and probably more than that is exported from Illinois.” That’s not surprising, he said, given that Illinois is the nation's top soybean producer and Iowa is second. “Our Sen. Dick Durbin really likes to tell Sen. (Chuck) Grassley about that and Sen. Grassley really likes to tell him that Iowa is No. 1 for corn,” the ISA leader said. The new ports also are designed to protect and grow the impact of both soybean and corn markets. Currently, Mr. Kubik said, exports make up a huge portion of the Illinois soybean market.  That’s expected to continue to grow thanks to emerging economies in places like Brazil, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Africa and India, he said. In China alone, Mr. Kubik said, demand has grown to 15 tons per year, and “a fourth of that flows through the Mississippi River system, so if we don’t have good infrastructure that growth will not happen,” he added. That makes the upgrading of the 80-year-old and rundown lock and dam system essential. The neglect of that system was quickly apparent to Mr. Sinkler when he was commander of the Rock Island Army Corps of Engineers.

Funding sent elsewhere

Then-Col. Sinkler quickly understood the need to update that critical lock and dam system after he had watched each year as the Rock Island office’s funding was sent to other districts for crises like hurricanes on the gulf. He had only to look at a map of port districts in the country to recognize why. “It made it very difficult to argue to keep resources from being programmed out of the area because we did not have a recognized port in the Rock Island district area,” he said. “Money was just flowing out and we were a piggy bank in a sense for other parts of the Corps of Engineers and I tried to put a stop to it when I was a district commander, but it required political organizations.” As a district commander he said he could only take it so far. Then, in 2019 he had the opportunity to start a two-year, tri-state service project designed to get some ports designated in the Corn Belt, where inexplicably there were none. He continued that effort when he founded and became CEO of Quad Cities-based Riverside Global, and now as a leader at Corn Belt Ports. “It’s bad enough being in flyover country,” Mr. Sinkler said Thursday. “It’s worse when you’re in flyover country and you’re contributing something to the national and global economy and it's not recognized in Washington, D.C.”

Democracy in action

So he set to work to get some in the several Mississippi River regions that desperately needed them but didn’t even have one. Along the way, he said, he had plenty of help. For example, he and his team went to 51 riverfront counties in five states, and all of those counties came together to support individual resolutions to make it happen.  “That’s incredible,” he said of what he called “a tremendous exercise in democracy” that came together in just 90 days. State approvals also were needed and here in Illinois it came quickly thanks to the leadership of lawmakers including Illinois Sen. Mike Halpin, D-Rock Island. The end result of those efforts, he said, is that the corn and soybean belt region is now served by four ports. And the impact of their existence has been swift and dramatic. Indeed, after what Mr. Sinkler called a “decade of death” for lock and dam funding, the Corn Ports are celebrating the startup of new projects funded through federal agency money and the COVID-19 infrastructure bill. And it's looking to add between $500 million and $1 billion more in investment to the lock and dam system down the road.  But the fight for recognition continues for the new ports.

Recognition still lags

Mr. Sinkler shared with conference attendees maps from major agencies and organizations including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers that still don't include the Corn Belt Ports. When you have “big national organizations that are influencing national investment and when you're left off the map like this, you’re just not going to get any money. That’s the fact.” Supporters told the QCBJ they hope the regional Corn Belt Port offices, including the one at WIU-QC, will help spread the word and increase the impact of these regional organizations. “WIU is excited to partner with the Corn Belt Ports to support environmental stewardship, enhanced transportation logistics and community and economic development across the entire Corn Belt Ports region,” WIU Director for the Institute for Environmental Studies and Environmental Studies Chair Roger Viaderod, said in a news release. “Having the Corn Belt Ports office in the Quad Cities located on WIU-QC’s campus is one example of the ways we work collectively to reduce barriers to collaboration. This is a win for WIU, its students, faculty and the Quad Cities community.” For more information on the partnership, visit riversideglobal.co/corn-belt-ports.