"It's been years since any kind of commodity has been brought in by rail to our elevator for distribution," said Doug Brown, Scott Co-op Elevator manager. "I think the last thing that might have been brought in by rail would have been coal many years ago."

This summer's drought has taken its toll on all crops produced in western Kansas, corn included. Because of the crop failure, feedlots in western Kansas dependent on corn production to feed their cattle have begun buying the corn from the local co-op shipping the commodity from Iowa.

"We are a corn-deficient area, and even without the drought, we don't grow enough in the area to supply the needs of area feedlots," said Chad Griffith, office manager of Scott City's Fairleigh Feedlot. "Up until recently, we pulled corn from southwest Nebraska as a way to generate enough corn."

It's all due to the drought, Brown said.

"In years past, there hasn't been the incentive to bring in corn like this," Brown said. "Trucks would bring the corn from Nebraska."

However, after two years of a short harvest in Nebraska, area feedlots are forced to search even farther north for a potential market.

Now, they are using the unit trains, which are train cars being loaded and shipped from a central location at a larger elevator in Iowa. The trains travel on a direct rail line to Hutchinson, then are switched to Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad, which operates the shortline.

"In this case, we are getting 75 cars at a time," Brown said.

When those trains arrive, time is of the essence.

"Feedlots have their own trucks, and we schedule them to load as soon as the train stops here," Brown said. "We have three days to unload 250,000 bushels of corn. And we work 12- to 15-hour days until the cars are unloaded. If we don't unload on that schedule, we have to pay a demurrage fee on all the cars."

Brown said the longer hours spent unloading the corn have come as a blessing to the co-op.

"Because of our short crop this year, we've been able to keep busy and not lay off any employees by unloading the corn," Brown said.

"It had been an issue with some people in the area that shipping the corn in was taking production away from growers in the area. But our local basis for corn jumped 4 cents the day the first load of corn arrived."

Griffith agreed that western Kansas is a corn-deficit area.

"This is the only way to generate enough corn to supply the need of all the feedlots. I think, initially, local producers worried this could hurt them, but we buy all the local corn we can."

Fairleigh Feedlot now trucks the imported corn 13 miles from Scott City to its feedyard, which has 35,000 head of cattle with a capacity for 40,000.

"We're just a mid-size yard, and we feed 10,000 bushels of corn a day," Griffith said. "It takes 67 acres a day of corn just for our feedlot. And on a yearly basis, it takes 240,000 bushels to just supply our feed. That means 200 circles of corn a year."

Stacy Hoeme, a corn producer and part owner in HRC Feedyard Inc., said there always will be a usage for all the local corn produced, and then some.

"I raise 750 acres of corn, and most of it goes for silage," Hoeme said. "That is chopped and fed on top of the corn, and is only a small portion of the ration."

In Scott County, 13 large commercial feedlots are dependent on corn. According to the Kansas Farm Facts from the Kansas Agricultural Statistics in 2000, Scott County produced 58,200 acres of corn. Those acres produced 6,074,000 bushels of corn.

Though feedlot managers contacted didn't wish to comment on how much it was costing to purchase the corn from the unit train, Griffith said it was not a bargain.

"It's not drastically cheaper or more convenient to get our corn this way," Griffith said. "It is just something we're forced to do because of the drought. Hopefully, it will go away."