Key Port Running at 85% of Capacity

The Louisiana port that handles the biggest share of the nation’s grain exports is operating at 85% of capacity, the top U.S. trade official said Friday. But agriculture experts said the shipping disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina would still cause headaches for Midwestern farmers during the looming harvest.

U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman said during a tour of the storm-damaged region that electricity had returned to the Port of South Louisiana on Wednesday and that the facility, upriver from New Orleans, was recovering quickly. The port was shut down for several days after the Aug. 29 hurricane.

“With all of the bad news from Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama, one of the relatively positive stories is the fact that commerce is moving, the ports are up and going,” Portman said in a conference call with reporters.

Portman said part of his mission was to reassure other countries that they would be getting the corn and soybeans they expect this season.

Outside of the government, though, there was skepticism.

With the fall harvest peaking in about two weeks, farms up and down the Mississippi River will need empty barges to ferry their crops to Louisiana. But most barges on the river are full and waiting to be unloaded. And many that are unloaded will soon be filled with imports, which are more valuable by weight than farm products are.

It takes about four weeks for “empties” to get all the way up the river to Minnesota, meaning that they would have had to leave Louisiana two weeks ago to get there in time.

“Not many empties are coming up. The transportation is not available when the grain wants to move,” said Jay Fitzgerald, an agricultural broker for Advance Trading Inc. in Bloomington, Ill.

In the wake of the storm, rail transportation has tripled in cost, and barge transportation more than doubled, he said, so farmers are having to sell grain for less. That makes them eligible for taxpayer subsidies that are triggered by the low prices.

Fitzgerald said he believed it would take four or five weeks for the Louisiana ports to work through the backlog.

“It looks like the port is coming back, but there are still a lot of things to do,” said Bob Callanan, spokesman for the American Soybean Assn.

“The workers have to get back to the terminals up and down the river, and at the same time they are trying to get their lives back in order. And there are up to 400 barges that are damaged and may be unsalvageable.”

Times staff writer Jerry Hirsch contributed to this report.