{"id":888722,"date":"2026-09-11T23:58:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/888722\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T23:58:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:58:16","slug":"deja-vu-for-grain-farmers-as-diesel-price-soars-ahead-of-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/888722\/","title":{"rendered":"Deja vu for grain farmers as diesel price soars ahead of harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring is one of the most fuel-intensive seasons for businesses in rural Australia.<\/p>\n

Farmers work around the clock to harvest their crops as trucks transport grain and food to silos and markets across the country.<\/p>\n

Trucking business owner Dan Russo said the return of high diesel prices<\/a> is “crippling the trucking industry”.<\/p>\n

Grain growers paid more for fuel and fertiliser during sowing earlier this year<\/a>, and now they are facing an expensive harvest.<\/p>\n

Victorian Farmers Federation President Ryan Milgate said it would “really, really bite on the bottom line”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’re getting a bit of deja vu where the price seems to be heading north again,” he said.\"A<\/p>\n

The price of diesel is going up just as farmers are preparing for harvest. (Supplied: Ryan Milgate)<\/p>\n

Mr Russo runs a fleet of 13 semi-trailers and road trains from his base in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

The costs are adding up.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got 10 trucks taking 1,000 litres minimum each day,” Mr Russo said.<\/p>\n

“Not to mention the extra repair bills due to the roads, extra running costs, registration, tolls.”<\/p>\n

Mr Russo said higher fuel prices come out of his pocket.<\/p>\n

“Every day I’m getting less and less optimistic \u2026 it’s very deflating,” he said.<\/p>\n

“[In June] when fuel hit $3.20, our fuel bill was just under $400k.<\/p>\n

“July, our fuel bill dipped down \u2026 August, it’s gone back up to $275k.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dan Russo says high fuel costs are crippling the trucking industry. (Supplied: Dan Russo)<\/p>\n

Mr Russo warned the extra costs would eventually flow on to consumers if help was not provided.<\/p>\n

“The more you hit the transport industry, the higher your consumer prices are going to be,” he said.<\/p>\n

“No-one wants to see $10 bottles of milk at the supermarket,” he said.<\/p>\n

Diesel the ‘only option’<\/p>\n

The grain harvest has already begun in central Queensland, with the rest of the country to follow in coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Mr Milgate said farmers were frustrated with the high diesel price, after an expensive sowing season.<\/p>\n

“We sort of can’t get a break here,” Mr Milgate said.<\/p>\n

“We’re looking at double the price of diesel that we were paying 12 months ago.”<\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/p>\n

Ryan Milgate says farmers are getting deja vu watching fuel prices rise again. (ABC News: Sean Warren)<\/p>\n

Crops in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia are on track to produce bumper yields.<\/p>\n

Mr Milgate said “diesel is the only option” to get the harvest completed.<\/p>\n

“I haven’t seen pedals on a header yet and I don’t really like the concept of that either,” he said.<\/p>\n

Simon Barbary farms at Woomelang in Victoria’s Mallee and while he is concerned about fuel prices, he is more worried about supply.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got to have it so unfortunately we’re just a price taker. You can’t say no as much as you want to,” Mr Barbary said.<\/p>\n

“If more ships get taken out, we’ll be filling everything we have no matter the price.”<\/p>\n

Mr Barbary requires about 15,000Lof diesel to get through harvest, a volume that his on-farm storage has the capacity to hold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’ll have to look at seriously building up my [fuel] supply for harvest now but that depends on price, I guess,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Low grain prices and high input prices, that’s what keeps me up at night.”<\/p>\n

Mr Barbary said the good season was one of the only things that has gone right this year.<\/p>\n

“If we weren’t looking at these sort of yields, we’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble,” he said.<\/p>\n

Bumper crops also come at the cost of the extra diesel it takes to harvest them.<\/p>\n

“The machinery is working harder, more truck trips to the silo, so yeah we will probably be using 10-20 per cent more fuel,” Mr Barbary said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Andrew Whitelaw says global fuel supplies are starting to get more constrained. (Supplied: Episode 3)<\/p>\n

Fuel flowing for now<\/p>\n

Commodity market analyst Andrew Whitelaw said fuel continues to be shipped to Australia, so supply was not an issue at this stage.<\/p>\n

“The numbers are still showing pretty strong flows coming into the country,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re probably about 5 per cent down year on year.”<\/p>\n

But Mr Whitelaw said the fuel situation is becoming “precarious” as the US-Iran conflict continued.<\/p>\n

“The reality is that stockpiles around the world are starting to get a little bit more constrained.”<\/p>\n

“If we start to see October volumes starting to look very sort of constrained … that’s when we have to start worrying and panicking,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spring is one of the most fuel-intensive seasons for businesses in rural Australia. Farmers work around the clock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,208513,265907,35431,458360,61833,263455,2185,16861,11038],"class_list":["post-888722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-cropping","tag-diesel-price","tag-fuel","tag-grain-crop","tag-harvest","tag-iran-conflict","tag-rural","tag-transport","tag-trucking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}