Congressman Ralph Abraham Requests Help From USDA For Soybean Storage
Louisiana Congressman Ralph Abraham is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help soybean farmers who have no place to put their crop, because silos are full as a result of the trade dispute with China.
Abraham says farmers must choose between harvesting soybeans with no place to bring them or letting them rot in the fields.
"Louisiana still has somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 and 400,000 acres of soybeans to harvest and these elevators just aren't taking the beans and it's an issue," said Abraham.
Abraham says among the suggestions he’s presented to the USDA, he says it may be time to reach out to private farmers of other crops to use their empty storage facilities.
"Incentivize those private bins to take these soybeans for just a short time until we can find some barges to offload them on," suggests Abraham.
Abraham says if this isn’t resolved quickly, the consequences could be dire.
"The end result could be farmers could go bankrupt. It's a clear and very present emergency that we only have a matter of a few weeks, if that much, to get this thing resolved," said Abraham.
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