The Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board would like to see more utilization of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway for exporting crops.
Board member Steven Wilkens says on a clear day, he can see Lake Michigan from his southeastern Wisconsin farm. “Each year, Wisconsin grows 100-million-ish bushels of beans and a lot of those beans leave our state because we don’t have the crushing capacity, so anything that we can do to help get down to the end user more efficiently will help us create better demand.”
Wilkens says Milwaukee and Green Bay are the largest ports with the potential to expand ag commodity shipping, but there are possibilities up and down Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan shoreline.
