Tony Seabrook, a fifth-generation farmer in Western Australia, has some tough calls to make in the coming days.
To sow, grow and harvest wheat, barley and canola on his 3,700-acre farm — modest by Australian standards — he goes through about 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel. With less than a third of that on hand, and oil prices gyrating because of the war in Iran, he has to decide whether to go head with planting and risk being unable to see it through, reduce his crop, or sit out the year.
“We get one go a year,” said Mr. Seabrook, 76, who said his father first put him on a tractor when he was 8 years old. “When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
The turmoil in the global oil markets couldn’t have come at a tougher time for Australian farmers: Harvest season is in full swing and new crops need to be sown in the following weeks. The national average of diesel price has jumped more than 50 percent this month, according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum, an energy industry group.
Adding to the crisis is worries over the availability of the fertilizer urea, much of which also heavily depends on transit through the now-threatened Strait of Hormuz.
Australia exports 70 percent of its agricultural products, mostly to Asia, meaning disruptions to production could affect food security throughout the region.
“If you wanted to cause the most amount of confusion in our industry, now is the right time,” said Nathan Falvo, 42, a jujube farmer in the state of Victoria who also runs a gas station and a business supplying labor to farms in his area. “Do I invest a few million dollars in seeding, hoping you have fuel and fertilizer in two months’ time? If they don’t have that, they’ve lost that crop.”
Australia, despite being a major exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas, finds itself particularly vulnerable to the current tumult of global markets after having wound down its domestic oil refining capacity in recent decades. The country went from meeting the vast majority of its fuel needs domestically 25 years ago to importing 90 percent of its fuel today, depending on deliveries from Asian refineries, which in turn receive most of their crude oil from the Middle East.
Chris Bowen, Australia’s energy minister, said over the weekend that six ships scheduled to deliver oil to the country from Asia had canceled their voyages in recent weeks. The country typically receives about 81 tankers of oil on average each month, Mr. Bowen told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Anxiety over fuel supply has led to shortages in some rural corners of Australia. Mr. Falvo’s gas station in Robinvale ran dry in mid-March, and he had to set per-vehicle limits when shipments finally arrived, he said.
Some farmers in Victoria have taken to sleeping out on their property to keep watch over fuel tanks, after thieves began drilling holes to filch the prized diesel, Mary Aldred, a legislator from Victoria, told Parliament this week.
“The pressure is not just physical; it’s mental and emotional because farmers are being forced into impossible decisions at the worst possible time,” Ms. Aldred said, describing conversations with her constituents.
Farmers there had been headed into a strong growing season with soil primed from plentiful rain after years of dry conditions, when the diesel price increase and shortages hit, she said, noting “timing is everything” in agriculture.
“You don’t get a second chance at sowing,” she said.
John Blackburn, a former deputy chief of Australia’s air force, wrote a report more than a decade ago warning of the country’s dependence on fuel imports. Australia’s vulnerability to disruptions in the Persian Gulf was long apparent, he said.
Australia has the lowest oil reserves among member nations of the International Energy Agency, and far shy of the 90-day reserve requirement that the organization has for the countries to be able to collectively respond in the event of an oil crisis.
Even if the war ended tomorrow and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz resumed, the reverberations in the energy markets and its impact on Australia’s farming sector will continue, Mr. Blackburn said.
“We’ve got a very large country with small amount of infrastructure along the coast,” he said. “Our logistical system very fragile.”
Andrew Henderson, a livestock farmer and agriculture policy specialist, was appointed by the government this week to carry out an assessment of the effects of the fuel disruptions on Australia’s food supply.
“Liquid fuels are the master constraint of our entire food system,” he said.
Referring to the current crisis, he added: “We hope it stops and gives us enough of a pause for reflection to act to mitigate our vulnerability, but doesn’t drag on so far that it collapses our economy.”
Victoria Kim is the Australia correspondent for The New York Times, based in Sydney, covering Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific region.
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