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See For Yourself: The Panama Canal
For the last 100 years the Panama Canal has provided a more efficient way to move goods and services around the globe.
Teo Jolly is a canal tour guide. As we locked through the Miraflores Lock, the second of three locks ships have to pass through to travel the canal he told me that for every $100,000 a company spends on their “toll” to the canal – it provides $1 million in savings.
But – that isn’t even the greatest benefit. “It’s the time,” he says. “Which is the most valuable thing. The time that it would take you to take a different route – by taking the Canal you could have already taken another trip and gone back. It makes you more efficient.”
AUDIO: Teofilo Jolly, Canal Tour Guide (10:00mp3)
This was Kansas farmer LaVell Winsor’s first time through the lock. She tells Brownfield she her visit reinforced the importance of our nation’s infrastructure to the agriculture industry. “Other countries realize that it is a competitive advantage,” she says. “Perhaps, maybe the US has become a little bit complacent about having those things in place. But – we really need to keep in front of it as US agriculture.”
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