Agricultural Transportation Research

Welcome to the homepage of a growing compendium of agricultural transportation research!
The buttons (images) below link to high-level summaries (main results and methods) of recent research organized by mode.

Rail

River (Barge) & Lakes

Truck

Ocean/Container/Ports

Multimodal/Supply Chain

More About This Resource

This resource organizes and presents—by mode—the main results of over 20 published, academic journal articles related to agricultural transportation research. Within each modal page (to be accessed from the navigation buttons above), research results are organized by topic or arranged by article title. Each research-results entry provides access, via hyperlinks, to summaries and (when available at no cost) complete articles. Published in the 2021 Compendium of Agricultural Transportation Research (pdf), each compendium summary presents an article’s underlying issue addressed, main goals of the original research, and main findings.
The Compendium summaries focus on recent research, spanning roughly the last 6 years, from 2015 to 2020. These summaries spotlight the main findings and methods of recent peer-reviewed agricultural transportation research in an easy-to-read, accessible format. Each summary runs no more than 750 words.
Keep in mind, these summaries:
  • Capture the study authors’ work at the time of their research efforts. For example, one study examined the impact of expanded interswitching limits in Canada, but those limits expired in late 2017.
  • Attempt to stay within the bounds of the research presented in each article. That is, the summaries remain faithful to the original publication and its conclusions.
  • Include only published, academic journal articles from 2015 to 2020, with one from 2021. They do not include high-quality research that is not yet a journal article or has not yet made it through the peer-review process. Furthermore, the compendium does not include seminal articles (published before 2015) that represent the foundation for the more recent research.
Disclaimer: The opinions and conclusions expressed in the summaries do not necessarily represent the views of USDA or AMS.
Photo credits: Getty Images and Adobe Stock.