Indiana Ag Policy Forum to Focus on Supply Chain, Transportation Disruptions

The impact to agriculture of supply chain disruptions, transportation issues, and infrastructure issues will be the topic of conversation Thursday in Fishers at the 2021 Indiana Ag Policy Forum presented by the Indiana Soybean Alliance and Indiana Corn Growers Association. Mike Steenhoek, Executive Director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, will be one of the featured speakers.

Steenhoek will discuss the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act”, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by Congress earlier this month.

“While this particular bill and the funding that it’ll provide is not going to be the immediate elixir to the challenges that we’re facing right now, I think the challenges that we are confronted with really serve as the motivation and a catalyst to seeing legislation like this get passed.”

Steenhoek says it will be critical for the bill to address increasing the capacity of the multimodal infrastructure system to handle the volume of freight from the ag industry and the broader economy, but also making sure it is as resilient and redundant as possible.

“And we’ve had a number of instances this year where you’ll have something go awry at one critical juncture of our transportation system, like Hurricane Ida that happened over the course of the summer, that if something goes wrong there it can really have a pretty pervasive effect on the industry and the broader economy. So, the goal for a lot of this spending that’s passed by this infrastructure bill is to really help increase the capacity, but also increasing the resilience of our transportation supply chain network.”

Hear more from Steenhoek at the Indiana Ag Policy Forum in Fishers on Thursday. There will also be a session on precision agriculture. More details and a link to register can be found here.

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