Montana Farmers Fear a Buffett ‘Dictatorship’

The WSJ reports on the fear of an Omahalebensraum:

Few states have more at stake in Warren Buffett’s acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe than Montana. The company owns 90% of the state’s tracks, which are the primarily means for Montana farmers and coal miners to ship their goods across the country.
To get a sense of how the deal is being received in the Big Sky state, Deal Journal reached out to Alan Merrill, president Montana Farmers Union, who can watch Burlington Northern’s grain cars rumble along outside his Great Falls, Mont., office six or seven times a day.
For years, Merrill says, the state’s 11,000 farmers have complained about the monopoly that Burlington Northern holds over rail shipping in Montana. He hopes Buffett, who lives in the middle of corn-growing country in Omaha, Neb., will be sympathetic to farmers’ concerns about what they consider to be high rates on their barley and wheat shipments.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on November 6th, 2009 at 3:26 pm

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