Farmers and truck drivers are being crippled by record-high diesel prices, and that's driving up prices of food and other goods for everyone

When Chris Bodnar and his wife Paige recently filled the diesel tank at their Abbotsford vegetable farm, the price was $3,000 — double what it used to cost.

The rising price of diesel across the world is hitting B.C. industries like farming and trucking hard, and that is trickling down to every household in the province as the price of food and all other goods that require transportation goes up and up and up.

“What does this mean for our food security long-term when things like this can destabilize the sector?” asks Bodnar, who is also an assistant agriculture professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Bodnar and other experts say the rising cost at the pumps is largely due to the U.S.’s war on Iran, which has severely disrupted global supply chains.

According to fuel analysis website GasBuddy, the average price of diesel has reached an all-time record high, impacting many sectors of the economy including “trucks, trains, agricultural equipment, and construction machinery.”

And Metro Vancouver has among the highest prices in the country: GlobalPetrolPrices.com pegs the average price of diesel in Vancouver jumping from $2.01 a litre in June to $2.84 this week. Some gas stations in the city advertised diesel at $3.05.9 on Thursday.

In Toronto, by comparison, the average diesel price is pegged at $2.33.

When she spoke to Postmedia this week, Chilliwack dairy farmer Sarah Sache was harvesting corn, a process that involves a corn harvester, five tractors, and trucks. “It does add up — all of those things run on diesel.”

The diesel refuelling truck just filled the tank at her farm on Thursday. She doesn’t know what the bill is yet, but is bracing for it to be as much as 50 per cent higher than usual.

“We’ve never seen fuel prices this high,” she said.

Farmers may need more help from government, she warned, “to make sure that we keep our food sovereignty here in Canada.”

Of course, the vegetables Bodnar grows and the milk Sache produces must travel on trucks to reach consumers. And diesel is the biggest expense in trucking companies’ operating budgets, making this a “tough time” for the industry, said Tej Dulat of the Canadian Truck Owners Association.

An average long-haul truck burns up to 4,000 litres of diesel a week, he said. At $2.01 a litre in June, the bill would have been $8,000; at today’s price of $2.84, it jumps to more than $11,000.

“Especially in B.C. it’s very high,” Dulat said. “And the B.C. industry is already suffering badly from the tariffs, and now the diesel is taking another toll.”

Truckers can’t stop those higher costs from pumping up grocery bills.

“Whatever is on our shelves, whether it’s medicine, whether it’s food, it is delivered by the truck,” Dulat said.

“At the end of the day, they have to pass it on to the consumers. … It will be an expensive Christmas if things go like this.”

Bodnar said rising diesel prices have hit some farming sectors “like a huge wave,” in particular those who use a lot of machinery or have high transportation needs, including beef, dairy, potatoes, grains, oilseed and forage crops like hay.

Farmers who grow mushrooms in greenhouses, for example, are less hard hit as they typically use natural gas.

A new report by Bodnar, called Farming at the Edge, finds farm debt is growing faster in B.C. than in any other province, due to factors such as: hefty mortgage payments or rent due to expensive land values, the high cost of living and wages for workers, and the escalating price of livestock feed, which is typically trucked in from other provinces.

B.C. farms tend to be smaller than in other parts of the country because of limited flat land for agriculture. Bigger farms in other provinces typically have larger margins to withstand pressure from higher costs, including diesel, Bodnar said.

Diesel costs are a relatively small piece of farmers’ financial pie, but “all these pieces add up and can make it really difficult to navigate the path forward.”

At his farm, where he grows crops like tomatoes, onions, carrots and lettuce, he bought an electric, three-wheeled utility vehicle to rely less on his diesel-dependent tractor.

But Bodnar, along with Dulat and Sache, said the federal and provincial governments must also be part of the solution. That includes more financial relief for industries reliant on diesel, and better policies to help them thrive in the future.

“If we actually want to see more B.C. food on the table, we need to be realistic. We need to be strategic,” Bodnar said.