U.S. diesel prices are now 60% higher than they were before the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February, according to AAA.
The national average hit a record $5.85 a gallon on Sept. 4 and rose again to $6.05 a gallon on Friday. The spike has arrived just as farmers need diesel to power combines, tractors and trucks during harvest for soybeans and corn, two of the nation’s largest commodities.
Jason Kurtz, a corn and soybean farmer near Forest City, Missouri, said he was paying twice as much for diesel this year. His combine uses 200 gallons of fuel a day, and he expected to run it for 30 days. He also needed diesel for a tractor and trucks.
'We have to harvest,' Kurtz said. 'We have to run the machines. We have to use the diesel, so it cuts into our bottom line.'
Kurtz, 49, said his finances were 'already tight' this year after paying more for fertilizer and chemicals. He voted for President Donald Trump.
Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the pressure goes beyond harvest work. 'It’s not just the harvesting. It’s the hauling of everything, moving the grain or the silage from the field to the farm and then from the farm to wherever they’re selling it,' he said.
The higher diesel bill traces back to disruptions in the world’s flow of fuel during the six-month war with Iran. The cost of crude oil, the main ingredient in diesel and gasoline, soared amid disruptions to tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
For farmers, that means higher input costs landing on top of an already expensive year. Mitchell said cash-strapped farms are now forced to decide what to cut to keep operating.
The market has already voted on the cost of war: when fuel jumps, the taxpayer and the producer pay first. Washington can call it geopolitics, but on the farm it shows up as a higher bill, tighter margins and fewer choices.
Free enterprise depends on predictable energy and stable trade routes. When conflict pushes diesel to record highs, productivity falls and the burden is passed down to the people who have to keep the machines moving.
