Excerpts from the report: Loss and damage to grain during handling and transportation is a serious economic problem to farmers and their grain marketing cooperatives. Farmer Cooperative Service conducted this study of losses in handling and transporting grain by rail and barge, with particular emphasis on shortage of weight at destination, in order to explore the economic significance of the losses, to identify possible causal relationships, and to suggest ways to control or eliminate the losses. Six regional grain marketing cooperatives in the Midwest cooperated in the study. These regionals supplied data on shipments made over a period of up to 3 years from 107 local elevators affiliated with one or more of them. A total of 13,611 individual rail shipments were studied, amounting to over 35 percent of all rail shipments made by these elevators during the period covered. The sampling rate on shipments at individual elevators ranged from 10 percent to 100 percent, depending on shipping volume.