Welcome to the Eric Erickson Show podcast, Hour 1.

Hello America, welcome. It is Eric Erickson here nationwide. Glad to have you with me.

The phone number 877973-72525 should you wish to be on the program. I got to deal with

some breaking news here out of the gate. It actually is rather important news I think everybody

needs to know about. It looks like Congress is going to pass legislation to a

pending rail strike. The Biden administration met with Mitch McConnell,

Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer of the White House.

Kevin McCarthy came out and said it does look like they're going to pass

something. There is a pending rail strike in the nation.

McCarthy says that Congress has to rush this through to stop rail strike,

suggest the economy is not as strong as the Biden administration says.

And there is a problem you all probably need to know about that depending on where you live, you might not know.

The Mississippi River is in a drought, a really significant drought right now.

Despite the rain, some of us have experienced and in fact, we're expecting bad rain to roll through Middle Georgia this evening where I am in the eastern seaboard, the Mississippi is water starved due to a lack of rain.

Now what does that have to do with rail? Well, if you've ever been on or near the Mississippi River, you see a lot of barges floating up and down the river.

A single barge can carry as much dry cargo as 16 rail cars or even 70 trucks.

So a 15 barge tow keeps 1,050 trucks off the highway.

They also can transport liquids pretty efficiently.

One tank barge moves as much as 46 rail cards or 144 trucks.

Here's a problem.

92% of our nation's ag exports flow down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

92% of our ag exports.

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