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.…