\n<\/p>\n
It has been a tough few years for American farmers.<\/p>\n
Squeezed last year by tariffs, they lost an estimated $34.6bn when former trade partners stopped buying. Now, the war with Iran has not only depleted crucial fertilizer stores but has also driven diesel fuel up to record prices. Like the trucking industry, agriculture relies heavily on diesel to run machinery, as diesel-powered engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline-powered ones.<\/p>\n
Worst of all, the price increase is taking place during the spring planting season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese rising costs are hitting us at the wrong time here in the north country in New York,\u201d said Blake Gendebien, who owns a 1,200-acre dairy farm with 500 cows in Lisbon, New York. \u201cI use 20,000 gallons of fuel to get my crops in the ground and harvested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last April, he paid about $2.65 a gallon for off-road diesel. Off-road diesel is for vehicles used off public roads and is therefore exempt from federal and state excise taxes. Depending on the state, it can be anywhere between $0.20 and $0.80 cheaper a gallon than on-road diesel.<\/p>\n
This year, it\u2019s pushing $5 a gallon. According to the most recent statistics, 86% of farmers in America run small family farms, defined as having a gross income of $350,000 a year or less. And the majority of those farms have high-risk profit margins of 10% or less. So rising diesel costs pose a serious threat to their ability to stay in business.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a massive cost for farmers that are already barely, barely getting by,\u201d Gendebien said.<\/p>\n
When Sam Frost recently purchased diesel for the family farm in the Fountain Creek Valley south of Colorado Springs, he didn\u2019t look hard at the price. \u201cI\u2019m still gonna go buy fuel regardless,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A fourth-generation farmer, Frost is CEO of Frost Livestock Company and focuses on its hay production, which makes about $200,000 in gross income. His brother, Will, is in charge of their organic meat and vegetable production, which they sell locally through CSA boxes and farmers markets. That part of the operation grosses about $100,000 a year<\/p>\n
Between them, they operate two diesel trucks to transport their goods and eight tractors to plow, plant and harvest about 425 acres. On 2 March, Frost paid $3.13 a gallon for on-road diesel for the trucks and $3.08 a gallon for off-road diesel. Last month, the price for off-road diesel jumped to $4.43 a gallon in his area. He would normally have ordered twice as much diesel, but he hasn\u2019t yet started preparing his fields for planting due to drought.<\/p>\n
To weather the increased fuel costs, Frost is looking to limit other spending. Still, he will probably end up passing along some of the costs to his consumers.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the country, in north-east North Carolina, cotton farmer Julius Tillery is changing his planting process to minimize the amount of diesel fuel he uses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very careful on my planting dates,\u201d he said of his 125-acre farm, which his great-great-grandfather started in the early 20th century. \u201cI can\u2019t afford to plant crops in bad climates, so the production window becomes smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the price increase, Tillery might have used some of his fuel supply to plant earlier in the season \u2013 always a gamble because an early frost could kill the crop. But not now: \u201cI don\u2019t have that margin any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
To save money, he\u2019s also fueling himself with lower-quality sustenance: \u201cmore ramen noodles\u201d.<\/p>\n
Small and Black-owned farms like the Tillery family\u2019s are less able to rebound from price shocks. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, 55% of Black-operated farms earned less than $5,000 a year, compared with 41% of all farms. Only 12% made $100,000 or more. From 2017 to 2022, the number of all farmers fell by 4% to fewer than 47,000 producers. Black-operated farms declined even more, falling by 8%. Of the 1.9m farms, only 32,600 were Black-operated. (Critics suggest that the census overcounts Black farmers by a significant amount, placing the actual number of Black-operated farms anywhere between 5,000 to 18,000.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue that most Black farmers have is our credit issues,\u201d Tillery said. So relying on credit to buy fuel isn\u2019t an option.<\/p>\n
Even under the Biden administration, the USDA only provided direct loans to 36% of Black farmers who applied as against 72% of white farmers. The Trump administration, in its vocal push to eliminate federal programs that attempt to address gaps in equity, has gone even further, most recently canceling a $300m program designed to help Black farmers and other underrepresented groups increase capital and prevent land loss. Letters informing grantees of the cancelation cited \u201cdiscriminatory preferences based on diversity, equity and inclusion\u201d.<\/p>\n
John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, raises Angus beef cattle and grows soybeans, corn, wheat and some hemp on 2,000 acres in Baskerville and Boydton, Virginia. He\u2019s watching his fuel gauges as carefully as anyone else to ensure he gets the most from his fuel, which he estimated costs him close to $6 a gallon.<\/p>\n
\u201cA 100-horsepower tractor holds about 100 gallons of diesel fuel, and that\u2019s $600,\u201d he said. It takes him only a day, or a day and a half, of planting to use up that amount.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s closely watching the health of Black farms, and the picture is concerning. Rising fuel prices could be an economic last straw for farms already on the edge of closure. \u201cWe have almost 200 pending Black farmer farm foreclosure notices,\u201d Boyd said. He\u2019s reached out to the Congressional Black caucus for assistance but has not heard back.<\/p>\n
Gendebien believes there\u2019s a large disconnect between rural America and Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough farmers in Congress,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t even have a farm bill.\u201d (The House passed its version of a farm bill on 30 April, and the Senate is expected to introduce its own version in the coming weeks.)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why he is running for Congress against Elise Stefanik, he said. \u201cIt would be so nice to have a congressman from the north country here that understands the beginning of food production at the farm gate all the way to the dinner plate.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the absence of an end to the war, farmers have limited options to mitigate the costs of diesel.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that we could do really quickly is end the tariff war,\u201d Gendebien said. \u201cWe would rather make money on our own through fair trade, rather than have our friends and neighbors and their tax dollars have to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frost would also like to see federal agencies that suffered mass layoffs under the \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d rehire staff to help farms like his access resources such as grants more easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Natural Resource Conservation Service [in Colorado Springs] has been de-staffed for, I don\u2019t know, a year and a half now,\u201d he said. He had been working with it on a project to transition from irrigation ditches to gated pipe that will significantly lower maintenance costs, but the agency doesn\u2019t even have enough staff to come out to his farm for site visits or to conduct reviews.<\/p>\n
Despite these challenges, these farmers remain determined to keep at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love with the smell of the land,\u201d Boyd said. \u201cFarming is a sense of freedom. I ain\u2019t giving out, and I ain\u2019t giving up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been a tough few years for American farmers. Squeezed last year by tariffs, they lost an estimated $34.6bn when former trade partners stopped buying. Now, the war with Iran has not only depleted crucial fertilizer stores but has also driven diesel fuel up to record prices. Like the trucking industry, agriculture relies heavily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3774,12342,10193,5185,6428,269,6707,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-49205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-barely","9":"tag-diesel","10":"tag-drought","11":"tag-farmers","12":"tag-farming","13":"tag-prices","14":"tag-squeeze","15":"tag-tariffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}