Farmers load grain onto rail cars at the Southwest Washington Grain Project site in Chehalis on Thursday, Aug. 13.
By Emily Fitzgerald
For the C-C Chamber of Commerce
Machines loading grain into rail cars is a common sight at 207 Maurin Road in Chehalis, a lot set aside by the Port of Chehalis for the Southwest Washington Grain Project.
Established via a collaboration between the Port of Chehalis, the Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative, and other regional agricultural partners, the Southwest Washington Grain Project is an initiative to construct a public grain storage and transloading facility intended to help local farmers sell wheat and barley to distributors.
The idea to build the facility began to form in about 2017, when producers with the Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative and representatives of the Northwest Agriculture Business Center and WSU Extension found that grain, especially malting barley, could serve as a viable crop for both growers and buyers. This could help them recover from issues such as flooding, natural disasters, and big companies terminating contracts for sweet peas and corn.
“They started talking and doing some feasibility stuff with WSU, and kind of determined that one of the things we could look at is wheat and barley production in Lewis County,” said Port of Chehalis Operations Manager Bill Teitzel. “But one of the things we’re going to need is we’re going to need a way to get that product where it needs to go.”
Thanks to a successful petition to the Lewis County Commissioners, the Port of Chehalis and the Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative received $800,000 for the installation of a rail spur on the port’s property.
“We want to support the ag industry in Lewis County because it’s important to what Lewis County has been and what Lewis County is going to be. It fits all the conditions we have at the Port of Chehalis and meets our mission,” Teitzel said.
The rail spur was completed in the spring of 2020. The next phase of the project involves building an on-site grain storage facility so growers can store their products while waiting for train cars to arrive, then load the product immediately once the rail cars are on site.
The Southwest Washington Grain Project has received state and grant funding for the construction of the facility and is just waiting on approval from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to move forward, Teitzel said.
“We’ve just got to get the final A-okay from the EDA on the documents we submitted, and then we can go out for bids and get this thing constructed,” Teitzel said. Co-op farmers grew 600 metric tons of barley on a collective 200 acres in 2020, followed by 1,400 metric tons in 2021, according to the Port of Chehalis.
In 2023, the farmers with the Southwest Washington Grain Project sold a collective 5 million pounds of malted barley to Great Western Malting in Vancouver.
“This year, we planted about 1,100 acres of malted barley,” said Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative President Jake Fay.
Approximately 12 small to medium-sized growers were involved in the Southwest Washington Grain Project in 2023, up from four in 2020. News that the grain storage facility has funding and will soon be built has only increased interest, Fay said.
“When this is up and running, I’ve got no doubt we could be (planting) 3,000 to 5,000 acres of malting barley in the greater Chehalis River Valley,” Fay said. “It is pretty exciting, really, to see agriculture remain as a viable economic opportunity within the region.”
Farmers interested in getting involved with the Southwest Washington Grain Project and the Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative are encouraged to contact Fay at [email protected].
