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Comment by jnurmine | Hacker News Reader

My takeaway from this is that the logistics network is very brittle and contains many weak points:

"A disruption to any of these [nine] counties [in California] may have ripple effects for the food supply chain of the entire country."

and

"... a lot of grain produced throughout the Midwest is transported ... via the waterways of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

The infrastructure along these waterways ... have not been overhauled since their construction in 1929. They represent a serious bottleneck ... If they were to fail entirely, then commodity transport and supply chains would be completely disrupted."

It would be interesting to know if the food logistics network of other countries have a similar scale-free topology with a handful of very important nodes and overlooked, but critical infrastructure. I'm guessing yes, they do.

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> My takeaway from this is that the logistics network is very brittle and contains many weak points

Fortunately, this isn't true, or at least hasn't been for 15+ years.

> ... a lot of grain produced throughout the Midwest is transported ... via the waterways of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

Only because the price is lower. Grain shipment is extremely price-sensitive! [1]:

> Prior to 2003, containers were mainly restricted to specialty crops, which would not fill a hold in a ship, and feed ingredients like corn gluten meal, bone and meat meal The containerization of grain in the US began to pick up significantly in 2004 because of the spread that emerged between backhaul container rates and bulk shipping. The rates for bulk shipping increased because of the strong demand for scrap metal.

> The North American consumer demand for imported Asia Pacific manufactured goods also surged between 2003 and 2008. Consequently, freight rates for containers on the westbound traffic lanes fell as the volume of empty containers returning to Asia became excessive. During this period, grain could be shipped in containers from Chicago at $35/40 per ton, while bulk rates for grain at the Gulf of Mexico were $60/70 per ton. This provided the incentive for commercial bulk grain shippers to begin arbitraging the freight and moving grain exports in containers.

[1] https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JTTs_2015031815114293.pdf

Fantastic paper on containerization of crops. I had no idea this type of analysis even existed

The concentration of traffic is an interesting element of this.

River transport remains huge. It's already impacted by low water (which railroads love: more rail shipments). Possibly also high water affecting navigability via both current/navigation hazards and low bridge clearances.

Fresh produce is sensitive to logistic snags but aren't grains much more robust and thus able to better withstand delays caused by temporary infrastructure failures?

For grains and similar items, I guess it really depends on the amount of available storage on the supply side and the duration of the failure. The grains themselves might withstand the delays but the disruptions would still be present (demand side lack of availability and increased prices).

The reasoning is:

1. If the usual way is to always ship out the grains, then presumably the supply side currently lacks storage facilities to store a lot of extra grain. I doubt anyone can keep such facilities around and empty "just in case".

2. Whatever the supply-side storage capacity is, it could still fill up if the stores were not emptied fast enough. And here the emptying process was part of the infrastructural failure.

3. The use of alternative transports could help but would cost more, otherwise everything would be already transported using these methods.

Only if it is temporary. A worst case lock failure will knock out river transport for years. Eventually you run out of wheat on the other side of the failure. Of course there are options, but they are vastly more expensive (ie thousands of trucks).

Rail will take over for barge before they would use trucks.

Rail will try, but doesn't scale as fast: tracks are not always running in the right direction, and the best maintained tracks are already busy. Eventually rail can have more capacity, but trucks can scale faster.

>tracks are not always running in the right direction

If the alternative is to let the grain rot, it does not matter much what direction the tracks run in; all that matters is that the the rail network connects some destination willing to buy the grain with where the grain is now.

A Mississippi barge is about 1,500 tons capacity, a truck is about 25/26 tons, and each rail car is about 100 tons. Barges are grouped in 15 barge tows, and trains are grouped in 90 to 125 car unit trains.

Its a bit easier to get the trains than that many trucks. Also considering that can do barges can almost always do trains. Its not ideal and barge would be preferred, obviously.

Well, they would use rail or at worst truck, but grain is often stored outside in piles. There is a photoshopped picture of one of these piles with a skier with the title "Ski Nebraska". A lot of farmers also have non-trivial storage to get a better sale price. There is remarkable redundancy in the food chain.

Will grain piled outdoors survive for very long without getting moldy or attacked by animals which like grain (like birds)..? Maybe it does, I'm no farmer!

There is a certain amount of loss, but the grain needs to be good enough to ship to someone else and they will have a grain contract that lists factors they will accept. They do test for molds and other things[1]. There is a article[2] from 2016 on the practice or research "grain piles".

1) https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/fgis-pdf-handb... (look at the grain inspection handbook)

2) https://agfax.com/2016/10/14/outdoor-piles-of-harvested-grai...

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