By BRUCE HOTCHKISS

The governors of Delaware and Virginia, the Maryland and Delaware secretaries of agriculture and the Virginia ag commissioner are appealing for federal authorities to break a legal logjam which has stalled the purchase by Salisbury, Md. -based Perdue Farms Inc. of Cargill’s grain handling and storage facility at the Port of Norfolk, Va.
They argue, in letters written variously to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and to Roger Fones of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, that the acquisition needs to be speedily approved to protect the interests of grain, corn and soybean farmers across the Mid-Atlantic.
The sale of the valuable port property, which includes a soybean processing plant as well as grain storage and ship-loading facilities, has been held up for more than four months in the Justice Department.
A Perdue official has hinted that Justice doesn’t understand the urgency and importance of the acquisition.
It is to that lack of perspective that the letters from the three states are aimed.
Urging swift approval of the proposed Perdue-Cargill deal were Delaware Gov. Tom Carper, Maryland Ag Secretary Henry “Bud” Virts and Virginia Ag Commissioner Carlton Courter III. They were joined by Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia and Delaware Ag Secretary Jack Tarburton.
In an effort to particularly protect Delaware’s soybean farmers, Carper, in a letter dated June 6, urged Secretary Glickman to intercede with the Justice Department.
Carper noted that earlier this year, Townsends had sold its poultry processing plant in Millsboro. The sale also meant closing the Millsboro soybean processing facility, and losing an annual demand of 12 million bushels of soybeans.
In Delaware, more than 7 million bushels of soybeans are grown by 1,200 farmers each year. Soybean is the state’s top growing crop and the No. 2 agricultural commodity behind poultry.
Perdue intends to operate the soybean processing plant at Norfolk plant at full capacity with an annual demand of 25 million bushels of soybeans.
In his letter to Glickman, Carper wrote, “Soybean farmers in Delaware and the upper Eastern Shore of Maryland face an uncertain future” but noted that if Perdue, as planned, pushed the Norfolk soybean processing facility to full capacity, that would more than offset the loss caused by the shutdown of the Millsboro facility.
“As you are aware,” Carper continued, “soybean growers in general are being severely impacted by very low commodity prices. You may remember visiting the Mid-Atlantic region last summer when you witnessed first-hand the devastating effect of the drought on our soybean farmers.
“The impact of these events has been compounded by the uncertainty they face with respect to the sale of the Norfolk Cargill plant to Perdue.”
The letters from Virginia’s Courter and Maryland’s Virts were addressed to Fones at the Justice Department.
Courter stressed the urgency of the situation, noting to Fones that “the delay in your approval is having unintended adverse consequences upon Virginia farmers.
“The delay... has caused uncertainty in the pricing of small grains which are coming to harvest.
“Approval now will permit Virginia growers to realize the benefit of higher pricing for those grains to be sold in the export market.”
Virts’ message assured Fones that the Perdue-Cargill transaction had the full support of MDA.
The Delmarva poultry industry, Virts wrote, “is Maryland’s No. 1 contributor to farm income and ...the poultry industry undergirds the viability of our entire grain industry.”