Barge design and positioning affect efficient movement on the Mississippi River. But when aging infrastructure brings barges to a standstill for as long as 12 hours, all the design in the world can't save what amounts to $100 million in delay-related costs. If the U.S. is going to move twice as much grain to market 20 or 30 years from now, we'll need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to update the river's ancient system of locks.