A look at how diesel costs have increased over recent years
It’s harvest time across the U.S. as combines roll through fields.
The USDA’s Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin from Sept. 9, for example, shows about 5 percent of the national corn crop is in the bin.
And while farmers are hoping for a safe and successful harvest, one inevitability is that the 2026 harvest will be an expensive one because of high diesel prices.
So much so that lawmakers like Kansas Senator Roger Marshall asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for the USDA to provide relief for farmers.
“Helping producers withstand this sudden and largely unforeseen cost shock is therefore both an agricultural and national-security imperative,” he said in a Sept. 11 letter.
To put the increased costs into perspective, Farms.com is comparing current diesel prices with those of past years and calculating how much farmers are spending to fill different combines.
| 2026 | 2021 | 2016 | 2011 |
Average diesel price ($/gallon) | $5.967 on Sept. 7 | $3.373 on Sept. 6 | $2.407 on Sept. 5 | $3.868 on Sept. 5 |
Cost of filling a John Deere X9 1100 (330 gallons) | $1,969 | $1,113 | $794 | $1,276 |
Cost of filling a Case IH AF11 (396 gallons) | $2,362 | $1,335 | $953 | $1,531 |
Cost of filling a CLAAS LEXION 8600 (304 gallons) | $1,813 | $1,025 | $731 | $1,175 |
Fuel inputs are a necessity farmers can’t do without.
“You can’t just really curtail the amount of fuel that you consume,” Mike Steenhoek, executive director with the Soy Transport Coalition, told Minnesota Public Radio. “You have to harvest your crop. You have to transport that crop. And machinery that has diesel engines is the way that that occurs.”
None of the major farm equipment manufacturers have an electric or hybrid combine harvester available for purchase.
A French company called Terafield, however, has an electric combine known as the Moonstone.
The combine delivers about 340hp, and can cover up to74 acres per battery charge.