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 on diesel to run machinery, as diesel-powered engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline-powered ones.

Worst of all, the price increase is taking place during the spring planting season.

“These rising costs are hitting us at the wrong time here in the north country in New York,” said Blake Gendebien, who owns a 1,200-acre dairy farm with 500 cows in Lisbon, New York. “I use 20,000 gallons of fuel to get my crops in the ground and harvested.”

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 $0.20 to $0.80 cheaper a gallon than on-road diesel.

This year, it’s 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 per 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.

“It’s a massive cost for farmers that are already barely, barely getting by,” Gendebien said.

No choice but to buy

When Sam Frost recently purchased diesel for the family farm in the Fountain Creek Valley south of Colorado Springs, he didn’t look hard at the price. “I’m still gonna go buy fuel regardless,” he said.

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

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’d normally have ordered twice as much diesel, but he hasn’t yet started preparing his fields for planting due to drought.

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.

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.

“I’m very careful on my 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 bad climates, so the production window becomes smaller.”

Before the price increase, Tillery might have used some of his fuel supply to plant earlier in the season – always a gamble because an early frost could kill the crop. But not now: “I don’t have that margin any more.”

To save money, he’s also fueling himself with lower-quality sustenance: “more ramen noodles”.

Harder for farmers of color

Small and Black-owned farms like the Tillery family’s 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 to 41% of all farms. Only 12% made $100,000 or more. From 2017 to 2022, the number of all farmers fell by 4% to less 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.)

“The issue that most Black farmers have is our credit issues,” Tillery said. So relying on credit to buy fuel isn’t an option.

Even under the Biden administration, the USDA only provided direct loans to 36% of Black farmers who applied compared to 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 “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 some hemp on 2,000 acres in Baskerville and Boydton, Virginia. He’s 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.

“A 100-horsepower tractor holds about 100 gallons of diesel fuel, and that’s $600,” he said. It takes him only a day, or a day-and-a-half, of planting to use up that amount.

He’s 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. “We have almost 200 pending Black farmer farm foreclosure notices,” Boyd said. He’s reached out to the Congressional Black Caucus for assistance but has not heard back.

Gendebien believes there’s a large disconnect 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 30 April, and the Senate is expected to introduce its own version in the coming weeks.)

That’s why he is running for Congress against Elise Stefanik, he said. “It 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.”

What could help now

In the absence of an end to the war, farmers have limited options to mitigate the costs of diesel.

“One thing that we could do really quickly is end the tariff war,” Gendebien said. “We 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.”

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 access resources like grants more easily.

“The Natural Resource Conservation Service [in Colorado Springs] has been de-staffed for, I don’t know, a year and a half now,” 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’t even have enough staff to come out to his farm for site visits or to conduct reviews.

Despite these challenges, these farmers remain determined to keep at it.

“I fell in love with the smell of the land,” Boyd said. “Farming is a sense of freedom. I ain’t giving out, and I ain’t giving up.”