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Fuel prices put additional stress on farm finances

The cost of fuel is taking a bigger bite out of a dairy farmer’s margin.

Northern Wisconsin dairy and crop farmer Ben Augustine says, “Trucking milk here is getting way too expensive.”

Augustine tells Brownfield he hauls his own milk to the processor, and he’s feeling the pain at the pump. “It’s eighty-five miles round trip, and it cost me almost ninety bucks a load to haul it just in fuel, and that’s the price last night. Who knows what it is today?”

Producers that don’t haul their own milk usually pay a set price per hundredweight, and they might also have fuel surcharges tacked on.

Augustine says his milk check is paying close to $17.00 per hundredweight, but the cost of feed, fuel, and other inputs is eating that up quickly.

Augustine has added more cows to the milking herd, so he’s also planting more acres of corn silage and haylage this year, meaning more diesel fuel use in the tractors as well.