From farms in New Zealand to factories in Delhi, the effects of the oil crisis triggered by the Iran war are rippling across Asia
We’ve got a small dairy farm, north of Auckland. We milk 200 cows and have a small amount of beef cattle and young stock.
We start about 4.30am in the morning – checking cows, feeding, milking and then we do it again in the afternoon. Most of the day is spent tending to stock, moving animals, and we’re busy renewing pastures at the moment.
Diesel is our main fuel – we run two tractors and machinery. We have quad bikes that run on petrol. Each month we use 900 litres of diesel and 200–300 litres of petrol. We’ve just used up last month’s diesel and we’ve been paying about NZ$1.85 a litre ($1; £0.80). Diesel is up $1.03 per litre and petrol up 33c per litre. That means an increase of $1,252 a month, or $15,024 a year.
It’s not just our own fuel supply – it’s the contractors that come into do work, and fertiliser has gone up 40%. It all has huge flow-on effects to our costs.
