Millions of tons of corn, wheat and soybeans travel down the Mississippi River each year to be shipped all over the world from New Orleans.
As of April 17, 641,000 tons of grain passed through Lock 27, a canal that runs more than two-dozen miles long and is located just outside of St. Louis in Granite City, Illinois.
This is a 34% increase over the same week last year when 479,000 tons of grain were shipped, according to transportation data from the USDA.
Of all the navigation structures on the Mississippi River, this one is the busiest, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Yet in 2019, farmers and others suffered deeply when barges couldn’t carry their grain after flooding halted barge transportation, according to a May 2019 Des Moines Register article.
Earlier this month, Google released nearly 40 years of satellite images showing environmental changes across the world.
Press the ‘play’ button below to see how this canal and its surroundings have changed since 1984.
