ST. LOUIS (AP) — With hopes of a once-stellar corn crop dimmed by a summer of drought, Gerald Jenkins doesn’t expect the unfolding harvest to burden his co-op’s grain elevators, which are capable of storing 9 million bushels of the grain it buys from growers. Finding timely barges to ship it off may be another story.

The same drought that has punished the Midwest’s corn and soybeans for months has lowered the Mississippi River that eases past the western Illinois co-op Jenkins oversees to levels unseen for nearly a quarter century. The shallower waterway — notably from Memphis south to New Orleans — has closed some portions of it while forcing shippers to cut the number of barges their towboats push and the amount of freight in each.