AgriFutures Australia Update: Fuel Supply Pressures

Dear valued stakeholder,

We are writing to provide an update on fuel supply pressures that are impacting our agricultural industries. As you know, this is an evolving situation that is causing significant challenges and uncertainty across the agricultural sector, because diesel is essential for everything we do and disruptions quickly affect operations, supply chains and food production.

We convened an AgriFutures Australia Industry Roundtable earlier this week to hear directly from representatives across a range of our Levied and Emerging industries. The discussions reinforced both the immediacy and scale of the challenge we are facing.

What’s happening
Fuel access is already tightening, with many experiencing effective rationing through capped volumes, reduced access via retailers, or outright regional shortages. Costs are also rising sharply, with increases of 25 to 66 per cent in fuel and transport expenses flowing through the supply chain. For many of our industries, there is little, if any, ability to pass these increased costs on.

The impacts are being felt more acutely in highly time-sensitive production systems, where disruptions to fuel supply will directly impact animal welfare, harvest windows, processing continuity and food availability. We are also starting to see risks emerge around other essential inputs like urea and closely monitoring stock levels of other related inputs, ranging from pallets to packaging.

Producers are having to make difficult decisions now, reducing activity, reconsidering inputs, and adjusting operational plans based on the expectation of further disruption. These decisions will have compounding effects in the months and years ahead.

Following today’s National Cabinet Meeting, the Prime Minister announced the appointment of Anthea Harris as the National Fuel Coordinator, and the establishment of a national fuel supply taskforce to drive coordination between the Commonwealth, state and territory governments on matters of fuel supply.

What AgriFutures is doing
As a Research and Development Corporation, AgriFutures Australia is not an advocacy body.

Our role is to convene industries, build evidence base, and support informed decision-making. We are already working to quantify impacts, model scenarios, and feed your insights directly into the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the National Coordination Mechanism, which is an Australian Government forum to facilitate crisis management and coordination among Federal, State and territory governments and the private sector.

We want to acknowledge the incredible effort of our industries in the face of these challenges. Please continue to reach out to your peak industry bodies and farmers’ organisations who are actively engaged in advocacy around fuel shortages and related issues.

We are here to support you. Please continue to reach out to AgriFutures Australia if you have significant updates, insights or suggestions to share by emailing