US farmers resort to extremes amid rising diesel prices: ‘Barely, barely getting by’ | Farming
The past few years have been difficult for American farmers.
Crushed last year by tariffs, they lost about $34.6 billion when their former trading partners stopped buying. Now, the war with Iran has not only depleted critical fertilizer supplies, but also driven diesel fuel prices to a record high. Like the trucking industry, agriculture relies heavily on diesel to run its machinery because diesel engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline ones.
Worse still, the price increase takes place during the spring planting season.
“These rising costs are hitting us at the wrong time here in upstate New York,” said Blake Gendebien, owner of a 1,200-acre dairy farm with 500 cows in Lisbon, New York. “I use 20,000 gallons of fuel to put my crops in the ground and harvest them.”
Last April, he paid about $2.65 a gallon for off-road diesel. Off-road diesel is intended for vehicles used off public roads and is therefore exempt from federal and state excise taxes. Depending on the state, a gallon can be $0.20 to $0.80 cheaper than highway diesel.
This year, the price hits $5 a gallon. According to the most recent statistics, 86% of U.S. farmers operate small family farms, defined as having a gross income of $350,000 per year or less. And the majority of these farms have high-risk profit margins of 10% or less. Rising diesel costs therefore pose a serious threat to their ability to stay in business.
“It’s a huge cost for farmers who are already struggling to get by,” Gendebien said.
No choice but to buy
When Sam Frost recently purchased diesel for his family’s farm in the Fountain Creek Valley south of Colorado Springs, he didn’t look closely at the price. “No matter what, I’m still going to go buy fuel,” he said.
A fourth-generation farmer, Frost is CEO of Frost Livestock Company and focuses on its hay production, which generates gross income of approximately $200,000. His brother, Will, is responsible for their organic meat and vegetable production, which they sell locally through CSA crates and farmers’ markets. This part of the operation brings in about $100,000 a year
Between them, they operate two diesel trucks to haul their goods and eight tractors to plow, plant and harvest about 425 acres. On March 2, Frost paid $3.13 per gallon for on-road diesel for trucks and $3.08 per gallon for off-road diesel. Last month, the price of off-road diesel jumped to $4.43 per gallon in his region. He would normally have ordered twice as much diesel, but he has not yet started preparing his fields for planting due to the drought.
To cope with rising fuel costs, Frost is seeking to limit other expenses. Still, it will likely end up passing on some of the costs to its consumers.
On the other side of the country, in northeastern North Carolina, cotton grower Julius Tillery is changing his planting process to minimize the amount of diesel fuel he uses.
“I’m very careful about planting dates,” he said of his 125-acre farm, which his great-great-grandfather started in the early 20th century. “I can’t afford to plant crops in unfavorable climates, so the production window becomes smaller. »
Before the price rise, Tillery might have used some of his fuel reserves to plant earlier in the season – which is always a gamble because an early frost could kill the crop. But not now: “I no longer have this margin. »
To save money, he also eats lower-quality foods: “no more ramen noodles.”
Harder for farmers of color
Small, Black-owned farms, like the Tillery family’s, are less able to bounce back from price shocks. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, 55% of Black-operated farms earned less than $5,000 per year, compared to 41% of all farms. Only 12% earned $100,000 or more. From 2017 to 2022, the total number of farmers decreased by 4% to fewer than 47,000 producers. Black-operated farms declined even more, by 8 percent. Of the 1.9 million farms, only 32,600 were operated by black people. (Critics suggest that the census significantly overcounts black farmers, placing the actual number of black-operated farms between 5,000 and 18,000.)
“The problem that most black farmers have is our credit problems,” Tillery said. Relying on credit to buy fuel is therefore not an option.
Even under the Biden administration, the USDA provided direct loans to only 36% of Black farmers who applied, compared to 72% of white farmers. The Trump administration, in its drive to eliminate federal programs aimed at closing equity deficits, has gone even further, recently canceling a $300 million program intended to help Black farmers and other underrepresented groups increase their capital and prevent land loss. The letters informing recipients of the cancellation cited “discriminatory preferences based on diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, raises Angus beef cattle and grows soybeans, corn, wheat and hemp on 2,000 acres in Baskerville and Boydton, Virginia. He monitors his fuel gauges as carefully as anyone to make sure he’s getting the most out of his fuel, which he estimates costs him nearly $6 a gallon.
“A 100-horsepower tractor holds about 100 gallons of diesel fuel, which is $600,” he said. It only takes a day, or even a day and a half, of planting to use up this quantity.
He closely monitors the health of black farms and the picture is worrying. Rising fuel prices could be the final straw for farms already on the brink of closure. “We have almost 200 black farmer farm foreclosure notices pending,” Boyd said. He contacted the Congressional Black Caucus for help, but did not receive a response.
Gendebien believes there is a significant divide between rural America and Washington.
“We don’t have enough farmers in Congress,” he said. “We don’t even have a Farm Bill.” (The House passed its version of a farm bill on April 30, and the Senate is expected to introduce its own version in the coming weeks.)
That’s why he’s running for Congress against Elise Stefanik, he said. “It would be so great to have a congressman here from the North Country who understands the beginning of food production from farm to fork.”
What could help now
With no end to the war, farmers have few options to mitigate diesel costs.
“One thing we could do very quickly is end the tariff war,” Gendebien said. “We prefer to make money on our own through fair trade, rather than letting our friends and neighbors and their taxes help us. »
Frost would also like to see federal agencies that suffered mass layoffs under the Department of Government Efficiency rehire staff to help farms like his more easily access resources such as grants.
“The Natural Resources Conservation Service [in Colorado Springs] “The agency hasn’t been staffed for, I don’t know, a year and a half now,” he said. He was working with her on a project to transition irrigation ditches to closed pipes that would significantly reduce maintenance costs, but the agency doesn’t even have enough staff to go to his farm for site visits or to conduct examinations.
Despite these challenges, these farmers remain determined to persevere.
“I fell in love with the smell of the earth,” Boyd said. “Farming is a feeling of freedom. I don’t give up, and I don’t give up.”
