Bridges key piece to toting big soybean harvest

STOCKLAND, Ill. (AP) — Small bridges across the soybean-growing Midwest can't handle fully loaded farm trucks.

The Soy Transportation Coalition and other soybean-industry trade groups are focusing on those obscure bridges as part of a multimillion-dollar campaign to try to improve the transportation infrastructure farmers use.

That push has greater meaning this year with soybean prices dropping and farmers looking at less money from crops.

Farmers west of the grain elevator in Stockland, Illinois, can either haul less-than-full loads across a small concrete bridge or drive farther to go around the bridge. Elevator owner Sonny Metzinger says either way it costs them more money.

The soybean groups say sometimes working on such bridges is a tough sell to government agencies with limited funding.

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