If you think your future rides solely on the information superhighway, try sending a million tons of grain on it.

The Saint Paul Port Authority owns a majority of the multimodal Mississippi River Terminal property, where commodities are loaded onto and unloaded from barges. About 9 million tons of commodities were shipped through the Twin Cities harbors in 2007 on their way through the inland waterway system to the Gulf of Mexico and the world.

These river connections help enrich Minnesota producers in two ways: First, having a port city like Saint Paul more than 1,300 miles inland provides significant marketing opportunities for heartland agricultural producers. Our shipping terminals -- Barge Terminals 1 and 2, Southport and Red Rock -- are a critical link in a highly sophisticated true Intermodal Freight Transportation System.

Second, Minnesota's inland water transportation industry directly generated hundreds of jobs and more than $4 million in payroll in taxes to the federal and state governments. In Minnesota, agriculture and its related industries currently employ one in every four workers and are responsible for nearly 20 percent of the gross state product.

Outbound commodities include grain, oil seeds, fertilizers, scrap steel and scrap aluminum. Inbound commodities include fertilizers, salt, gravel, cement, asphalt and coal.

River shipping provides one of the most efficient methods of bulk commodities transport. If the rail system had to move all the grain and oil seeds that are transported on the Mississippi River system in one year, an additional 122,000 rail cars and over 1,000 locomotives would be needed. The number of miles that one ton can be carried per gallon of fuel is 59 by truck, 202 by rail and 514 by barge.