The average price of off-road diesel June 12 hit $5.77 a gallon, up from $3.214 a year ago, a nearly 80% increase. Moreover, farmers in several locations worry that they can’t even be sure of deliveries of their advance orders. Oil refining in the U.S. has been contracting yearly; now, in the hurricane season, all it will take is one bad storm to knock out a petro plant, and shortages will strike big.
A farmer with 500 acres of no-till corn and soybeans faces additional costs of production from the diesel inflation, of at least $4,500 to $5,000 to produce his or her 2022 crop. Local media are full of stories.
PENNSYLVANIA. “We are teetering on the edge,” Pennsylvania Farm Bureau spokesman Kyle Kotzmoyer told the state legislature. He reported on one Lehigh Valley farmer telling him earlier, “I’ve got a tractor hooked up to my corn planter out here, no diesel fuel, and I can’t afford to get any,” reported ZeroHedge today.
