Arden Engelage walks slowly across the 98-year-old bridge that spans 170 feet across Big Creek. The years have taken their toll on the aging structure. Rust covers the steel spans and rickety railings. The worn wooden deck has 3-inch gaps between the planks, providing a clear view of the creekbed below.
With a 4-ton weight limit and a width of less than 14 feet, the bridge can't handle today's large farm equipment and trucks.
"Rural America's survival depends on good roads and bridges," says Engelage, the presiding commissioner in Warren County, Mo., who also farms and raises cattle. "We can't afford to neglect our infrastructure."
Unfortunately, we have. Leading transportation experts contend that America's crumbling infrastructure faces a crisis. The Federal Highway Administration says 33% of the nation's roads are in poor or mediocre condition, while 25% of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
For American agriculture, a well-maintained and modern road system is crucial for moving mountains of grain and remaining competitive in a global market. Yet the lack of investment shows from the maze of gravel roadways that weave across the country to the major interstates that support the nation's economy.
"We're going to have to rebuild our infrastructure to harvest this grain," says Max Smith, referring to pledges from seed company executives to double the nation's average corn yield to 300 bushels by 2030.
"If we double our yields, how are we going to get it out of here in 20 years? I see it as the biggest challenge to getting this grain to market," says Smith, a farmer and operator of the Knoxville-based Smith Fertilizer and Grain that serves southern Iowa.
Decaying infrastructure. Like almost every industry that moves freight, agriculture just keeps putting more demand on the nation's roadways.
"Any American who drives knows it's falling apart," says Jack Schenendorf, a transportation expert who served as vice chairman of the National Surface Transportation and Revenue Study Commission. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out."
Infrastructure challenges are growing as farmers like Smith move more grain more often. Due to biofuels production, semi trucks are hauling corn, soybeans, ethanol and distilled grain year-round.
During the winter months, salt, grading and the constant melting of snow cause gravel roads and asphalt or concrete roadways to disintegrate into a morass of potholes.
Yet rural roads and bridges may have to sit on the back burner while America rebuilds its urban core and its interstates.
The national transportation commission Schenendorf worked on concluded earlier this year that America needs to spend at least $220 billion annually over the next 50 years to deal with the country's growing congestion and freight problems. That's about 40% more than the federal government now spends each year on transportation.
How did the nation let its infrastructure crumble away? America has gotten by the past half century because of the interstate building boom of the 1950s and '60s. A national plan and investment program started under President Eisenhower gave the country an interstate and highway system that was relatively new, debt-free and, at the time, had excess capacity.
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"We became complacent because we have had a new system the past 40 years," Schenendorf says. "Unfortunately, those days are over and what we face today is a looming transportation crisis."
Iowa is almost a microcosm of the challenges facing the country. In 2006, a study by the state's Department of Transportation (DOT) determined that Iowa faces a $27.7 billion funding shortfall over 20 years to meet road needs.
After the initial sticker shock, Iowa lawmakers asked the DOT to pare its biggest priorities down to about $4 billion. State lawmakers have agreed to find new funding of up to $200 million a year, but are struggling to find even that much. Still, DOT officials say the legislature's efforts amount only to a Band-Aid.
"Even with that $200 million in revenue, the overall system is going to deteriorate," says Stuart Anderson, an Iowa DOT planner.
Iowa's yearly bounty of corn and soybeans are grown in a region with a plethora of rivers and streams. Though Iowa ranks 30th in population, the state ranks 12th in the number of road miles and fifth in bridges, at 24,799 crossings. When all deficient and obsolete bridges are tallied up, Iowa ranks eighth nationally behind California, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Biofuel boom and bumps. Iowa's roads and bridges are deteriorating as the state has become the center of the country's biofuels industry, with 34 ethanol plants and 14 biodiesel facilities. Iowa DOT officials calculated in 2006 that given the growth of the state's ethanol industry, it now takes about 1.4 million semi truckloads just to deliver grain in and out of the ethanol plants.
The magnitude will expand when cellulosic ethanol becomes commercially viable. Such facilities will rely on more trucks to deliver bulk biomass materials to keep those plants operating.
"We're talking about a potential impact for biofuels production in transportation on our state that just might be hard to fathom," says Nancy Richardson, Iowa DOT director.
Bigger and heavier farm equipment, along with the growing use of semi trucks puts a huge strain on an aging infrastructure and accelerates wear and tear.
"Our bridges and roads have really suffered from the added weight," points out Royce Fichtner, a county engineer for 40 years in Marshall County, Iowa. "From that standpoint, bigger is certainly not better. Gravel roads are literally being squished out like a marshmallow."
Awash with road damage. If Iowa didn't have enough road problems, flooding across the eastern half of the state in June demolished dozens of roadways and bridges. Farmers and rural residents across a large swath of the state found themselves cut off from road access to the closest town or grain elevators.
Beyond dealing with the flood-damaged roads, Muscatine County engineer Keith White hears from residents expecting new pavement projects. But much of that wishing is not realistic. Counties across Iowa just don't have the funds to lay new asphalt.
"When I speak about construction, it's usually a function of maintaining what we have," White says. "Certainly, in the state of Iowa at all levels, our funding has to go up."
DOT's Richardson points out that state highway departments already are trying to deal with the "800-pound gorilla," which is a $3.5 to $4 billion current shortfall in federal Highway Trust Fund money. That translates into $16 billion or so in cuts for state road projects. Some states such as Missouri already have made cuts in their programs because Congress hasn't been able to develop a fix for the budget shortfall.
Funding problems are likely to increase. Higher gas prices mean Americans are driving less and buying more fuel-efficient cars. That means less gas tax money for the federal government and states. Car and pickup truck sales are also in the tank, resulting in fewer license and registration fees for states and counties to allocate for road repair.
And like farmers' input costs, prices for concrete, steel, asphalt and other materials are skyrocketing, meaning projects get scaled back or not completed at all. Already, construction estimates for planned road and bridge projects double in costs every 10 years.
Reform versus earmarks. States and counties are looking for infrastructure help from the federal transportation bill, set to be reauthorized next year.
The commission study that Schenendorf worked on was largely to help Congress define priorities leading up to that bill. The commission highlighted that Congress faces a funding crisis, which will require either new revenue for roads or a potential cut of up to 30% from funding in the 2005 transportation bill.
It concluded the federal gas tax—now at 18.4 cents per gallon—needs to increase 25 to 40 cents over five years to address road and bridge needs over the next 50 years. (The federal tax on diesel is 24.4 cents per gallon.)
There has been little political will to boost the tax, something lawmakers haven't done since 1993. Yet roads have become such a catastrophe that traditionally anti-tax business groups have emerged as some of the chief advocates for increasing gas taxes.
Nevertheless, experts say raising fuel taxes alone won't be enough to repair the nation's infrastructure. Other proposals include expanding toll roads, privatization, public/private partnerships and even a tax system based on how much driving you do. However, with its lower traffic density, most of these plans won't work in rural areas.
Beyond financing, the federal transportation bill also suffers from a loss of mission and national focus. Taxpayers have lost faith with a process that creates earmarks such as the now-infamous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. The project would have cost $231 million in federal money for a bridge supporting an island with fewer than 50 people. Congress eventually dropped the project.
Still, the last transportation bill had 5,634 earmarks for federal projects, blocking off $21.6 billion in funds. Twenty years earlier, the transportation bill had 10 earmarks.
"When the next bill is authorized, you are going to have a lot of credibility issues with the federal programs," Schenendorf says.
Reformers such as Schenendorf would like to see a clampdown on earmarks. He points out that the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which effectively created the nation's interstate system, had zero earmarks. However, economic development leaders in rural America say there would be few major highway projects getting priority now outside the cities without earmarks.
Lack of leadership. While there is no consensus on how to pay for more roads, there is a growing outcry for national leadership on the issue.
But infrastructure is not on the agenda as far as the presidential candidates are concerned.
"Everything politicians want to do depends on having a healthy, robust economy," Schenendorf says. "You cannot have a first-rate economy without a first-rate transportation system."
In Trucks We Trust
Semi trucks have become the vehicle of choice for moving the nation's grains and goods. According to a recent study, the big rigs carry 74% of the $8.4 trillion worth of commodities delivered annually within the U.S. But higher, heavier and faster truck traffic is causing havoc to roads and bridges.
Gene Griffin, director of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University, says agriculture itself is partially to blame for the nation's road woes.
"We've seen a tremendous increase in agricultural production over the past 20 years that requires more semi trucks to handle the growing volume. In North Dakota, only 23% of farms had a semi in 2000. By 2007, it had grown to 40%. Plus, growers have turned semis into multi-purpose vehicles; they haul everything from hay and grain to crop inputs and nurse tanks."
Iowa has seen similar gains in semi truck use. From 1995 to 2000, farmers relied on semi trucks to move 48% of the state's corn and 45% of the soybeans to market—up from 37 and 31%, respectively, five years earlier. Those who used semi trucks to move grain also were willing to travel nearly four times farther to market than farmers with smaller trucks.
With the growing use of semi trucks on the farm, some groups are calling for a change in weight exemptions.
Federal regulations let states exempt vehicles from commercial vehicle weight restrictions up to 26,001 pounds as long as the truck remains in the state. Once it crosses a state line, however, it falls under the federal standard of 10,001 pounds, even if both states allow for the higher weight limit.
"This is a particular problem for farmers who have to travel only a short distance, but whose best market is just across the state line," points out Elizabeth Jones, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau.
"Farmers hauling their own commodities are essentially being treated like full-time, for-hire commercial truckers."
Fletcher Hall, chairman and CEO of F.R. Hall & Associates, a public affairs firm specializing in agricultural transportation, contends the federal transportation bill, scheduled to be reauthorized in 2009, should include a title that specifically allocates funds for rural roads.
"It's time that our rural roads, which are the lifeline of delivering food from farm to fork, receive attention and funding to provide America's farmers and consumers with quality, safe and affordable agricultural and food products," he says.
The Rural Transportation Infrastructure Improvement Title would:
extend the federal agricultural exemption for drivers from the current 100-mile radius to 150 miles.
increase the weight limit on federal highways to 97,000 pounds (up from 80,000 pounds) for trucks transporting raw agricultural commodities and forest products from point of harvest to the first point of processing.
establish a dedicated trust fund for maintenance on rural roads that are used extensively for the transportation of agricultural commodities, forest products, renewable fuel feedstocks. and renewable fuels.