BNSF made gains in grains in 2025
By MIKE PAGEL
Staff Writer
Despite a year of unusual market dynamics in 2025, BNSF’s agriculture business finished the year with some notable achievements. This business covers everything from field crops to fertilizer as well as renewable fuels.
Corn volumes reached an all-time annual record in 2025 and the most since 2018. We also broke all-time annual volume records in oil seeds/meals and ethanol.
No one could have predicted the trade situation that unfolded in 2025, especially with soybeans. For five consecutive months, no soybeans were exported from the U.S. to China, the world’s largest market. That hasn’t happened in at least three decades.
Every fall, BNSF plays a prominent role in transporting soybeans from the heart of America to Pacific Northwest (PNW) export facilities. When China stopped buying soybeans from the U.S., we pivoted and created a new solution to meet producers’ needs and get soybean crops to an alternate market.
“This was another great year for soybean production,” said Matt White, assistant vice president of ag products marketing. “But without demand for soybean exports out of the PNW, the market needed to pivot on where soybeans needed to be shipped.”
Suddenly, soybean export demand moved to the Gulf. BNSF was ready, shifting a significant number of shuttle trains south to the Gulf ports. In September and October, we moved soybean shuttle trains to the new destination. (Shuttle trains are a dedicated service, moving high volumes of single commodity, like soybeans, from a single origin to a single destination.)
“Shout out to our operations team for handling these additional trains,” said Angela Caddell, group vice president of the Agricultural and Energy Business Unit. “This is way beyond what they would typically move, but they stepped up and handled the challenge extremely well.”
When PNW export demand resumed in late fall, BNSF was again ready; we posted the highest number of PNW export deliveries in November and December since 2020.
In addition to demonstrating BNSF’s ability to be creative, nimble and flexible, our agricultural products team achieved the development and opening of more than a dozen new rail-served facilities in 2025.
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Grain (Hager City, Wisconsin): A former rail-loading frac sand site was transformed into a rail-loading grain terminal, offering producers year-round access to our extensive network. Operations began last spring, enabling ALCIVIA, a member-owned agricultural and energy co-op, to move grain even during winter months when other terminals are closed.
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Fertilizer (Courtland, Kansas): In July, Central Valley Ag opened a new facility that includes a 3.5-million-gallon fertilizer plant and a grain shuttle with direct access to our rail network.
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USD Clean Fuels (San Bernardino, California): Opened in January 2025, this facility handles renewable diesel, biodiesel and E85. It reinforces our commitment to the renewable fuels supply chain, serving Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) markets across the West Coast.
2025 was an unpredictable time in the global agricultural market, and we showed BNSF is a supply chain provider our customers can count on, no matter the challenge.
