A stack of papers is keeping eastern Colorado and western Kansas farmers out of the lucrative west-coast market and bringing a group together to levy an antitrust suit against the railroads. 

Stefan Soloviev was an unlikely farmer with his full-sleeve tattoos, big-city upbringing, and a last name that looked very different from the primarily German surnames in the area. However, when he was trading commodities full-time, he began purchasing farmland and eventually built a dryland empire along the Kansas and Colorado border. While he was building his land, he admits he wasn’t popular as the New Yorker outbidding the locals at every auction. But when he quit farming and leased all of his farms to young, local producers, he met personally with each one and committed to working with them and for them. 

It became clear to him in 2015 if a short rail line called the Towner Line were operational, he and his neighbors would have additional rail access that was more centrally located relative to his farms. The abandoned line was purchased and was to be scrapped. After a long and expensive fight, Soloviev secured an injunction, purchased the line, proved to the Surface Transportation Board he could operate it for the obligatory three-year period, and finally rehabilitated it, making it part of his Colorado Pacific Railroad. 

His Weskan Grain, built in 2022, boasts 11 locations with 6.3 million bushels of upright storage, another 6 million of ground pile storage, multiple locations, and an hourly receiving capacity of 70,000 bushels. Weskan’s facilities receive grain and ship train units, which are 110-car trainloads of the same commodity. Paired with the Colorado Pacific Railroad, farmers have a streamlined option for marketing their grain with lower transportation costs. From Weskan facilities, grain moves to Pueblo, where it can be marketed more competitively. 

Weskan Grain’s bulk train-loading facility in Stockton stands next to the Colorado Pacific, formerly the Missouri Pacific’s main line from Kansas City to Pueblo. Stockton was home to a pumped water station that supplied water to steam locomotive boilers. The town eventually grew to about 300 residents but dried up and blew away at some point. The Weskan Grain Station now stands in its place, creating its own grain elevator skyline. 

In his antitrust suit against Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad (K&O), LLC and Union Pacific Railroad Company (UP), he and 13 farmers in both states allege the railroad engaged in conduct to “stifle competition from a newly rehabilitated rail line and preserve control over westward shipments of grain.” 

He said once it became clear Soloviev would operate the Towner Line, Soloviev alleges K&O put a paper barrier in place. According to counsel, the “exorbitant fees on rail traffic from western Kansas to eastern Colorado, Union Pacific Railroad Company has erected competitive and financial barriers on the railroad tracks it owns in the region that increase transportation costs and transit times, making it difficult for local grain farmers to earn a fair price for their crops. Union Pacific Railroad Company is preventing farmers and everyone else from obtaining lower prices.”

The suit also alleges the defendants secretly and unlawfully amended a 1997 lease, imposing an interface fee on any railcar that originated or terminated on the UP Lease Track owned by UP and leased to K&O that connects the K&O-owned Great Bend Line to the east and the Colorado Pacific-owned Towner Line to the west. The interchange fee is believed to be $500 per car, which is cost-prohibitive for farmers shipping grain and for Weskan Grain, and greatly reduces Colorado Pacific’s revenue. 

Soloviev said he didn’t set out to fight the railroads but someone had to stand up to the bullies. He said, “Someone had to put their foot down eventually and again we tried working this out. We don’t want any special treatment. We just want to be treated fairly just like any other grain company but when you’re dealing with these secret paper barriers and you’re dealing with this type of bullying, someone’s got to stand up to them and who else is going to do it?” There’s no timeline for the suit to be brought before the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. Until then, the basis price in the area has increased between 30 and 40 cents. Local farmers have more options; 50 farmers have leases with Soloviev, and he seems to be proving he’s there to work with and for farmers and the communities they support. 

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication.