West Australian farmers face a wait of up to three weeks to receive fuel supplies as a result of panic-buying across the metropolitan region.
From potato farmers in Manjimup, to grain farmers near York, the fuel shortage in the regions could have a flow-on effect to the seeding and harvesting of various crops.
Potato farmer Dom Dellavedova has about 10 days of fuel left before he has to halt his harvesting production.
“The [fuel] tank is 10,000 litres, I have about 3000 litres left. A lot of the irrigation’s done with diesel motors. We chew through that quite easily in 10 days,” Dellavedova told this masthead.
“Down [south] here is probably the biggest horticultural region in Western Australia. You’ve got avocados, you’ve got potatoes, you’ve got apples, you’ve got just about everything. It all requires irrigation.
“Now, the worrying thing about all of this is that if fuel gets held up or delayed, it’s going to have a big impact on us, it’s going to have an impact on the grain growers.”
Dellavedova said the lack of fuel also impacted the delivery of goods to supermarket shelves.
“While everything seems to be sort of OK at the moment, it just worries me looking down the road when you have this gap of nothing coming in,” he said.
Similarly, grain farmer Nick Emin faces big impacts to his crop yields if the flow of fuel to his family farm in the Wheatbelt doesn’t improve.
“We’re farming west of York, which is about an hour east of Midland. It’s a 900-hectare pure cropping farm and we’re growing canola and barley. So, this time of year we are in full swing of paddock preparation and getting our machinery ready for seeding which starts in about four to five weeks,” he said.
Emin was told he too would face a three-week wait time to get access to his regular fuel supplies.
“We’ve had really good communication from our wholesaler, and they’ve said that the big refineries are limiting sales to wholesalers to try and hold the diesel metro,” he said.
“Earlier in the week [we were told] ‘no fuel is available and you can’t order any’. Now a limited amount has been released to our wholesaler, but he’s had to cap it at 4000 litres per farm until he gets around to everyone to try and make it go a bit further.
“But once his levels reach a certain target he then has to stop delivering again to allow it to stay for emergency services.”
How far does 4000 litres go on a 900-hectare farm? Emin said it would last only four to five days.
“Our diesel consumption is increasing naturally at this time of year, but not being able to get it means that a lot of the preparation activities we’re doing either have to slow right down or we can’t do them at all,” he said.
“If we do get a limited supply of diesel, it means the work that we were trying to do over four to five weeks has to be done in a smaller amount of time which doesn’t really help when it comes to stress and anxiety for people.”
Both men wanted to put to bed the misconception that farmers were panic-buying fuel.
“Farmers can only store so much on their bowsers. So, a lot of the panic-buying seems to be coming from the metro area, and it seems that agriculture as an industry has been put on the backburner to try and preserve stock levels for metro,” Emin said.
“There’s a lot of misinformation around growers stockpiling fuel causing these issues.
“But it just happens to have fallen at the time of year when growers are stocking up anyway for their seeding preparations.”
During federal parliament question time on Wednesday, Nationals O’Connor MP Rick Wilson said that farmers weren’t “panicking” and were instead being “prudent.”
“Now the [Energy Minister Chris Bowen] says in the Dad’s Army-style of Corporal Jones, ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic,’ but these farmers aren’t panicking, they’re just being prudent,” Wilson said.
“They’re being told that the fuel that they need to get those potatoes out of the ground and get them on the supermarket shelves is not going to be available.”
Wilson said farmers who produced 27.2 million tonnes of grain in the last harvest were also at risk of catastrophic consequences due to the lack of fuel available.
“There is a lot going on in the broad acre wheat-belt farms that require a lot of diesel. They’re spreading lime, they’re doing summer spraying, there is stubble rolling going on and by the end of the month they will start dry sewing,” he said.
“If they’re not able to start sewing at the correct time, then that will have a catastrophic impact on the yield come the end of the year.”
Ministers have attempted to reassure Perth motorists that fuel is not going to run out and there is no need to panic buy.
“All of the contracts are being filled, 100 per cent absolutely being filled. But where the disruption is occurring is where people are panic buying or stockpiling fuel,” Energy Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said on Tuesday.
WA Premier Roger Cook will convene a fuel security roundtable on Wednesday afternoon to gain insights from fuel industry representatives and key sectors on the potential impacts of conflict in the Middle East.
The roundtable will be held at Dumas House with state government ministers and WA industry leaders attending.
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