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John Lindgren shuffled up the sloping, covered walkway next to the Columbia River, a conveyer belt rumbling at his elbow.

Behind Lindgren, a rotating line of buckets dipped into a floating Shaver Transportation barge, scooping wheat onto the belt to be deposited into a towering riverside silo.

“So there are 7,200,000 pounds in this,” Lindgren bellowed, gesturing at the barge holding hard red winter wheat from the eastern fields of Washington and Oregon. “3,600 tons is how much is in this. And it will take us anywhere from four to six hours to unload.”

Lindgren is export terminal director for Vancouver-based United Grain Corp., where that wheat was being off-loaded. From his vantage point, winter wheat, corn and other farm products will keep things hopping at the terminal for the foreseeable future. Those commodities should fill most — and sometimes all — of the 230 silos on the sprawling leased Port of Vancouver property, awaiting cargo ships to haul them across the Pacific Ocean.

On the seventh floor of a downtown Vancouver office building, Augusto Bassanini and Gary Williams have a different perspective. Soybeans have commanded a lot of their attention lately.