Last May, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) and the Ports of Indiana (PofI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to explore how to best expand containerized shipping, particularly “to develop new container shipping facilities in Indiana that would serve critical needs in the agriculture and hardwood industries.”

The MOU is set to end on April 30 - which raises questions about where containerized efforts stand today. 

It’s not clear whether the MOU will be reauthorized. When asked, Jody Peacock, PofI CEO, said, “An MOU lays the groundwork for developing partnerships, and we’re happy to consider a continuation of any MOU if it meets the goals and needs of all partners.”

Drew Sherman, ISDA’s international trade director, said, “we will continue to engage with PofI and other partners on this topic, and we remain open to conversations to renew the Memorandum of Understanding to benefit Hoosier farmers and agribusinesses.”

The MOU wasn’t the only high-profile 2024 container event. Last June, then-Gov. Eric Holcomb participated in an Indiana Container Shipping Conference and Intermodal Rail Tour, hosted by the Ports of Indiana, the Indiana Soybean Alliance (ISA) and the Indiana Corn Marketing Council (ICMC).

Another important move: establishing the Indiana Container Task Force (TF), a working group that would investigate the start-up of new shipping services from maritime ports and rail connections.

Also critical: In July, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection approved the Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor to establish the first international sea cargo container terminal on Lake Michigan. Plus, PofI, plans to open a Marine Container Terminal at Burns Harbor next year.

Courtney Kingery is ISA’s CEO, and a leader of the task force. “The Task Force has been meeting regularly to explore both short-term and long-term opportunities for increasing containerized ag exports,” she said.

She listed two immediate priorities:

- Completing a market analysis and cost-to-serve model to provide data on how many ag product containers are currently exported, where they go, and associated freight costs. Early estimates are that around 6,500 ag containers are exported annually. But, Kingery wrote, “feedback from Task Force members indicates that number may be too low. A thorough market study will give us a clearer picture of the opportunity for growth.”

- Optimizing export routes. The Task Force is working to identify the best routes for containerized ag exports to East and West coast ports. “The faster and smoother we can move soybeans and corn internationally,” she said, “the more competitive Indiana farmers will be in the global market.”

Kingery added that neighboring states like Illinois and Ohio have container infrastructure in place and that “their farmers and businesses are benefiting from containerized exports, while Indiana farmers are not.”

Kingery listed three task force challenges for 2025:

- Finding the resources to build a dedicated agricultural export hub with container storage and intermodal capabilities.

- Transportation and logistics costs – currently, the cost of getting Indiana’s soybeans and corn to global markets is higher than neighboring states. Optimizing routes and improving efficiencies in containerized shipping is a complex process involving multiple stakeholders, including railroads, ports, and exporters. Reducing costs while ensuring reliability is a top priority but remains a difficult challenge.

 - Market access and competition – Indiana and U.S. farmers compete with

South American growers. The U.S. needs a reliable supply of differentiated containerized products. This will require close work among international buyers, logistics providers, and policymakers, she said, “to ensure Indiana-grown crops remain competitive in global markets.”

A central challenge with containerization can seem like a chicken-and-egg riddle. Empty containers need to be close by and accessible. If a port that uses containers is too far, the transport costs don’t work. If a region or shipping facility does not use containers, then, of course, there are never any empty containers to refill. To start shipping with containers, someone must bring them in, not easy if a port can’t load and unload containers and store empties waiting for brokers to take advantage of them.

Benjamin Nething is a Grain Buyer with Deerfield Ag Services based in Deerfield, Ohio, about 40 miles south of Cleveland. His company specializes in soybean container shipping. Deerfield Ag’s facilities, he explained, are close to container storage areas near Cleveland. In short, containers are accessible. The containers, he said, “need to be moved around as little as possible because they are expensive to move.”

His company buys grain and loads it into containers. These are shipped via rail, sometimes to a destination and sometimes to a maritime port, mostly, for his company, to the Ports of New York or Norfolk, Va.

Nething said the railroads are critical for container shipping. Again, referencing Ohio, farmers there are close to major container facilities in railyards in Cincinnati and Cleveland where empty containers are available. In river ports, such as Cincinnati, there is no containerized shipping, ag products are bulk loaded and shipped via barge.

Because it’s another transport option, containerized shipping expands the volume of products that can be moved. In addition, Nething said, container shipping can deliver a higher quality product, frequently important for certain buyers. This is particularly true for soybeans grown in the Great Lakes region, for which there is a high demand in Asia for tofu and other soy-based protein foods.

Containerized transport, Nething said, helps to maintain quality because the grain is handled just one or two times. With bulk shipment, a grain is handled repeatedly from farm to storage to rail or a truck, then to a ship or a barge. Those steps are repeated when the grain is unloaded and moved to a final purchaser. When grain arrives in a container, only the final buyer handles it.