Iran war: Live-streaming star and oat-growing arable farmer finds his diesel costs doubling
Saturday, 4 April 2026
Arable farmer Craig Whiteside was last seen hoisting a camera above one of his crop fields to capture the livestream no-one knew they needed - the extreme low-key, excruciatingly slow world of growing oats.
The South Otago crop farmer is keen to report that over a million people have, improbably, tuned in to see the uber slow-motion live-cast (that was also a publicity stunt for Boring Oatmilk). More still are expected to tune in for the climax to the whole thing - harvest time.
But on a less cheery note, Whiteside’s diesel costs have at least doubled thanks to war in the Middle East, just as the most critical, energy-using time of the year is upon him.
“We are in one of the busiest times of our year with diesel use; we’re probably using 65% of our diesel at the moment and for the next couple of months - and the price has essentially doubled.”
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Whiteside reckons the price of diesel was about $1.40 excluding GST before hostilities broke out in the Middle East, while the most recent price he paid was about $2.80: “That’s the first thing we have noticed directly.”
“I’ll be honest a little bit here though - at the moment …the most important thing is not so much the price but that we are getting it - that’s the immediate concern.”
Whiteside was in close contact with his suppliers, who were saying at present there was diesel available. He thought it may be also to do with the fact farmers harvesting crops could be a priority case for the fuel.
The arable farmer was also in contact with his fertiliser supplier and they are all indicating price rises, he said, with talks going on about what can be done to alleviate the issue.
So what can be done?
“There are opportunities to forward purchase … so we’re looking at that,” he said.
Then there are the more indirect costs coming down the pipe. Freight is a big one, particularly the FAF (the “Fuel Adjustment Factor”), a variable surcharge applied to base transport rates to account for fluctuations in fuel prices. This component was also on the increase as a result of diesel costs spiking. It meant domestic freight costs for shifting crop harvests were up between $50 - $80 a tonne - at the higher end, almost double the usual cost.
International freight is likely to be even more heavily impacted as time goes on, both from the point of view of cost and also, potentially, capacity.
“Farmers are in a bit of a bind because we pay all the freight in and all the freight out, so it’s kind of a double whammy,” Whiteside said.
Overall, he said his general outlook largely depended on how long the war and its attendant impacts went on for.
“My sense is that this is another round of Covid and hyper-inflation. The immediate concern is to get the [harvest] job done and then go from there. The arable sector is having tough times by default anyway - there’s been plenty of publicity around that - so this is probably just adding to the stress of it all a bit.
“But in New Zealand we are lucky, in that we are going to finish the next two months of autumn, and then the country goes into hibernation as we go into winter. Glass-half-full, you’d hope things would have corrected a bit by the time we get to spring.”