NGFA president: Transportation ‘bread and butter’ of ag industry

CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA, US — The National Grain and Feed Association’s 129th Annual Convention from March 8-11 in Carlsbad, California, US, focused on a timely issue: transportation.

More than 600 attendees at the Omni La Costa resort joined Mike Seyfert, president and chief executive officer of the NGFA, association staff and a lineup of leading professionals, including Patrick Fuchs, recently appointed chairman of the Surface Transportation Board (STB), and Joseph Hinrichs, president and CEO of CSX Transportation. Topics included grain and feed regulations, US trade policy, government advocacy and the railroad industry.

Seyfert, who was raised on a family farm in Kansas and has been president of the NGFA since 2021, sat down with Sosland Publishing to discuss transportation, US policy and the association’s focus this year and beyond.

Founded in 1896, the NGFA is a nonprofit trade association representing more than 800 companies with thousands of facilities throughout North America, from country grain elevators and feed mills to railroads, barge lines, banks and biotechnology providers

Sosland Publishing: You had Patrick Fuchs of the STB here Sunday talking about regulations, the transportation panels before that, and then Joseph Hinrichs this morning again on transportation, so that’s obviously a big issue this year.

Mike Seyfert: Transportation is one of the bread-and-butter issues that we work on for our members. You’ve got to move it from the farm to the country elevator and then move it from the country elevator to the export elevator or the crush plant or the biofuels plant, the poultry feeders, the flour miller — you name it. So it’s always really important.

I think about 20% to 35% of all our grain moves by rail. At some point in time almost half of our exports move by barge. About 60% or more of what moves out of the Gulf moves by barge. In the past there’s sometimes been a tough relationship between the railroads and their shippers, their customers, which Joe Hinrichs spoke to this morning.

We see the possibility of streamlining regulations, with the Surface Transportation Board and across the government, which is a good thing. We have a great working relationship with Chairman Fuchs. Frankly, we’ve got a great relationship with all the members of the STB.

But I think also, I’ve been with NGFA now four years, my fifth annual meeting, and one of the things I’m really proud of is we really have improved the relationship and the communication between NGFA and our member companies and the railroads in these last four years. We have developed a really good dialogue with the railroads on behalf of our members and their customers where now we’re able to have discussions about problems that, in the past, one of us might have just gone to Congress, might have just gone to the STB and complained, but now we’ve got open lines of communication. We work it out. We figure it out on behalf of our members.

Sosland: And what sort of work do you do with the ports?

Seyfert: We have some of the ports that are members. We’re always very supportive of the annual funding appropriation, in terms particularly of dredging of the rivers and the ports so that we can continue to ship as efficiently and to the maximum extent possible.

With a lot of our ports where the bulk commodities go out on the ocean-going side, it’s about keeping those rivers dredged, and the deeper we’re able to keep them dredged, that means more capacity. That’s better for the buyer and that’s better for our NGFA members that are shipping those commodities for export.

Sosland: What are some things you’re excited about in 2025?

Seyfert: We had some good wins at the end of last year with the reauthorization of the Water Resources Development Act. We’ll have to get funding through Congress, but we think that will be important for continuing to fund and upgrade many of the dams, particularly in the Mississippi River system, that were originally built in the 1930s with a 50-year lifespan, and now a lot of them are at 80-, almost 90-plus years. We’re very excited about that.

We think there’s some real opportunity with this administration for some regulatory reforms. We like what we’ve seen in terms of cutting, they’re saying 10 regulations for every one that’s issued. We think there’s opportunity … to possibly get some more common sense into these rules, or outright repeals, versus what was proposed in the Biden administration.

We’re always engaged with the farm bill. We want to continue to see a market-oriented farm policy and to be able to get some additional funding in the trade-promotion programs.

And then the US Grain Standards Act is up for reauthorization this year, and that’s obviously very important for the grading and the inspection of grains, especially for export. We think we’ve got some real agreement coalescing around what we’re proposing there.

Patrick Fuchs, chairman of the Surface Transportation Board, speaks to attendees March 9 at the National Grain and Feed Association’s 129th Annual Convention at the Omni La Costa resort in Carlsbad, California, US.

| Credit: ©NGFA

Sosland: And what are some challenges?

Seyfert: One thing I’ve heard consistently since I came onboard is the challenge of labor and hiring in rural areas. What’s been most surprising is that it hasn’t mattered whether it’s our smallest or largest members. Whatever segment they’re in, they’ve had trouble filling positions, trouble finding qualified folks or getting folks to stay.

I know of one member who had a position advertised in a rural area, well into $20 an hour, and they didn’t have a single applicant for almost a year and a half. And I think that’s the challenge of hiring in some of the areas where our facilities are.

But I also think it’s providing some opportunities for us to look at technology, ways to use technology to be more efficient. One of the things for me, I understood the importance of the transportation system before I joined NGFA, but what’s amazing to me is just seeing and understanding how much one hiccup in one key area can impact the entire transportation system. How much water levels can impact you or your competitiveness. How much, if you have a rail challenge in Mexico, because of issues on the Mexican side, it can ripple through the whole US and North American system.

I don’t think unless you’re involved in this industry every day you can really understand how important all legs of the transportation stool are.

And then, the overall ag economy is down, not just on the producer side, but we certainly hear from people that things have tightened up, margins have tightened up, and one of the things you’re going to see is that when the market gets soft that will tighten up a lot of things.

What’s that going to mean in terms of actions and investments? And I think in particular there’s some investments, a lot of money that’s been put in on the crush-side potential, biofuels, synthetic aviation fuel — that’s one area there’s a lot of uncertainty about exactly what the final federal policy will look like.

The toughest thing in any business is uncertainty. And in a couple of those sectors that are so important to our membership, there is uncertainty now — in terms of what the action’s going to be, what the final decision’s going to be on some of those provisions, if they’re continued or eliminated or modified. Some of it is direction that the administration can give, some of it is congressional action, and then just seeing how that’s going to work out. It’s going to be really important to our membership.

Sosland: In the four-plus years you’ve been NGFA president, what’s changed and what are some of the needs you’re hearing about from members?

Seyfert: In the association business, you’ve got to show value and return on investment. We work very hard to do that on behalf of our membership. Three areas that we really focus on: advocacy work on all these issues in Washington and across the country; safety training programs that are incredibly important to our members, particularly those that may not be big enough to do their own safety training programs; and then NGFA has maintained for its 129 years a set of trade rules that are constantly updated to govern the rules of trade in the industry. Members continue to tell us all three of those things are incredibly important.

We’ll continue to advocate as the issues change. Safety training, a lot of that remains the same, but a lot also changes as technology changes. Then trade rules, some things haven’t changed much in 125 years and some things have changed a lot in how our members do business just in recent years. So those trade rules we’re constantly taking a look at and updating and revising to make sure they’re still reflective of the marketplace today and allowing it to function in the best way possible.

Then one of the things we do as an organization is our committee apprentice program, folks five to seven years in the industry who are nominated by their companies and selected. We bring them to this meeting and several other meetings throughout the year.

What I’m excited about this year is that our foundation is putting forward funding for 20 members of the industry to go through a more rigorous type of setting, class training. It’s a real opportunity to take that program up to the next level.

There have been several hundred people who’ve gone through that program since it started in the mid-2010s. Now we have folks who’ve served on our board, a current member of our executive committee and now three members of our foundation trustees and numerous folks on our committees. We view that as a real opportunity to train the next generation of leaders in the organization and in the industry.