Food, in brief

The average price of diesel in the United States reached $6.44 a gallon on 18 September, the highest ever recorded there. [5]

Four days earlier it was $6.28, and a year ago it was about $3.75. [4]

The record has landed in the few weeks when American farmers have to cut and move the corn and soybean crop. [1]

Drew Peterson, who grows soybeans and corn and keeps cattle in south-east South Dakota, expects to spend as much as $1,500 a day fuelling one combine harvester, double last year. [1]

Addie Yoder, a farmer in north-east Missouri, runs two combines and three lorries from mid-September to late October, and says one combine alone takes 300 gallons. [1]

Wayne Gularte, who grows vegetables on about 600 acres near Gonzales in California, has put petrol tractors from the 1950s back to work and parked one of the farm's diesel pickups. [1]

A farmer quoted by Bloomberg held off buying diesel after the price jumped at the start of the war with Iran, hoping it would ease. Harvest is weeks away and it has not. [6]

Most food in the country travels by lorry and lorries run on diesel, says David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University. [1]

US food prices in August were 2.7% higher than a year earlier, and Reuters reports that further rises at the grocery store look hard to avoid. [1]

The shortage is of refining rather than crude oil. Russia banned diesel exports on 9 July and later extended the ban to the end of the year. [4]

By September half of Russia's six largest diesel refineries had cut output sharply or shut down, and diesel exports from Russia and the Gulf together are down about two-thirds from 2025 levels. [3]

American refineries ran at nearly 98% of capacity in late August, the highest since 2018, and still made less diesel than in 2025. Their stocks of diesel and heating oil were the lowest for that point in the year since 1951. [4]

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas wrote to Brooke Rollins, the US agriculture secretary, on 11 September asking for temporary help for farmers. [1]

Brent crude futures were $103.77 a barrel on 18 September, down 1% on the day, as markets shrugged off fresh threats to supply. [8]

Cargoes for near-term delivery cost more than futures: North Sea Forties crude reached $136.75 a barrel on 15 September, after Saudi Arabia suspended loadings and Libya halted three oil fields. [7]

Why it matters. Watch whether American refineries can lift diesel output before the harvest ends in late October, because stocks of diesel and heating oil are the lowest for the time of year since 1951 and heating demand starts straight afterwards.

Freight railways in the United States add a fuel charge on top of their freight rates. It reached 48 cents a mile per grain wagon in the second week of September, 153% above a year earlier, on US agriculture department figures. [2] That charge is now 11% of the cost of moving corn and soybeans by rail, against 5% a year ago. [2] Gary Millershaski, a Kansas wheat farmer, says his elevator is offering 70 cents a bushel under the Chicago futures price, where 40 cents under is normal. [2]

Why it matters. Most corn, soybean and wheat growers have no river barge nearby and must use the railways, so the charge comes back to them as a lower price at the elevator. It is the same fuel bill as the lead story, arriving one step further down the chain.

The US Department of Agriculture has added more than 30 million base acres to the two main American farm safety-net programmes. [9] Base acres are the historical crop area a farm's payments are worked out on, so adding them widens who gets paid and by how much. This is the first increase in 20 years. [9] Because the acres that qualified exceeded the 30 million cap set nationwide, the agency is cutting every newly allocated figure by 3.69%. [9] Sign-up for the 2026 crop year opened on 16 September and closes on 11 December. [9]

Why it matters. It decides the payments on tens of millions of acres for years, and it arrives in the same autumn as a record fuel bill that no farm programme covers.

California had 10.13 inches of precipitation between January and August, 4.47 inches below normal and the driest such stretch since records began in 1895, according to the US drought monitoring service. [18] August alone brought 0.09 inches, also a record low for the month. [18] About 2 million people in the state now live in an area classed as in drought. [18] The drought map is used by the US agriculture department to trigger disaster declarations and decide who can borrow. [18]

Why it matters. California grows a large share of America's fruit, vegetables and nuts, and Wayne Gularte, one of the growers quoted on fuel costs in the lead story, farms 600 acres of vegetables there.

Spain's government is open to the Italian family behind Pietro Coricelli taking control of Deoleo, the world's largest maker of olive oil, three officials told Bloomberg. [12] That is a change: Spain's government had previously signalled it wanted a Spanish buyer. [12] Deoleo's private-equity owners said last month they were considering a sale after years of weak profits. [12] Spanish officials now regard the Coricelli family as the best-placed bidder. [12]

Why it matters. Spain grows most of the world's olives, and who owns the biggest bottler decides where the profit on a Spanish crop is booked.

Mars, the company behind Snickers and M&Ms, says its next cocoa plan leans on cloned trees and software rather than on planting more land. [13] A clone here is a cutting from one high-yielding tree, so every new plant is a copy of it. Its research centre registered 37 disease-resistant clones with Brazil's agriculture ministry, and two clones bred with Indonesia's research agency reached up to 2.65 tonnes a hectare in trials. [13] Cocoa traded at about $5,616 a tonne on 17 September, less than half the record set in December 2024. [13]

Why it matters. Mars named climate, farmer incomes, pests and disease as the threats to its cocoa supply, so the answer it has chosen is more beans per existing hectare rather than more hectares.

Kristjan Loftsson, who runs Hvalur, the only whaling company still operating in Iceland, told Reuters that bills to ban whaling have come before parliament several times and always come to nothing. [16] Iceland's government said last week it will put a permanent ban to parliament in February. [16] Hvalur runs two catcher boats, employs about 150 people in a season that runs from early June to late September, and has caught 85 fin whales this year against a quota of 150. [16]

Why it matters. Fin whales are listed globally as vulnerable but as of least concern in the North Atlantic, which is the gap the company and the bill are arguing over.

The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries has launched a campaign called Flat is Back to get people eating flounder, a flatfish its boats land in quantity and sell cheaply. [17] In August it set up a council of ten chefs from around the state to write recipes for it. [17] The problem it is aimed at is narrow taste: in 2023 more than three-quarters of all the seafood Americans ate came from just ten species, led by shrimp, salmon and canned tuna. [17] Cod stays popular even though its numbers have fallen sharply, while flounder is abundant. [17]

Why it matters. Dan McKiernan, who runs the state agency, says he wants to repeat the method for other overlooked fish, which would move demand towards what the boats already catch.

General Mills, Kellanova, Mars and McKee Foods have filed against American sugar producers, alleging they fixed the price of granulated sugar. [14] The suit says the producers had access to a clearinghouse of live competitor data on profits, prices, costs and production, and used it to hold prices up. [14] ASR Group, one of the accused, says the filing repackages allegations pending for about two years. [14] The plaintiffs say sugar prices fell sharply after the first such lawsuits began in March 2024. [14]

Why it matters. The people suing are the big companies that buy sugar by the tonne, not shoppers. They are arguing over what a factory pays for sugar, not what a bag costs in a shop.

From the 2026 crop year the US Farm Service Agency will treat limited liability companies and S-corporations as pass-through entities, meaning each member who is actively farming helps the business qualify for payments. [10] Until now a farm set up as one of those had a single payment limit, while partnerships and joint ventures were counted member by member. [10] The agency will judge each business by how it was structured on 15 September 2026, and anyone reporting a change after that date must prove it was made by then. [10]

Why it matters. It raises how much a farm can receive from government programmes without changing a single acre, and it favours operations big enough to have several active partners.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service, the US agency that advises farmers on soil and water, has published an interim final rule treating almost every wetland decision it issued after 28 November 1990 as certified. [10] A wetland decision says which parts of a farm count as wetland, and it governs eligibility for farm loans, conservation money, crop insurance and commodity payments. [10] Under the rule a decision stands if the farmer was told about it and given the right to appeal at the time, and it cannot be reopened unless the farmer asks. [10]

Why it matters. Farmers can now drain, clear or alter land against an old ruling without risking their programme payments, which settles a long-running uncertainty and also locks in decisions made decades ago.

Marketing assistance loans let American farmers borrow against a stored crop instead of selling it into a weak market, and from 2026 the rates on them rise for every eligible crop. [11] The programme and its cash alternative, the loan deficiency payment, are now authorised through the 2031 crop year. [11] Cotton growers get a higher storage credit cap and a world price calculated from the three lowest quotes instead of five, backdated to 4 July 2025. [11] The sugar programme runs to 2031 with higher loan rates for raw cane and refined beet sugar. [11]

Why it matters. These are the floors under a crop's price, so raising them changes what a farmer can afford to refuse in a bad autumn.

Mars and the network Unreasonable have chosen 13 companies from the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Portugal and India for this year's food-technology group, the third such round. [15] Lasso Labs spins ingredients into fibres in the way sugar is spun into candyfloss, to give food a meat-like texture without additives or high heat. [15] Nutrition from Water grows microalgae in fermentation tanks to make powdered protein for dairy makers. [15] Spore Bio uses light and machine learning to find bacteria in factory samples in minutes rather than days. [15]

Why it matters. The money has moved from finished products towards the machinery of making food, which is where a contamination scare or a texture problem actually starts.

The poverty rate in the United States was 13.1% in 2025, unchanged from 2024, the Census Bureau said on 15 September. [19] Median household income rose to $87,460, the highest on record once inflation is taken out. [19] Food stamps kept 3.1 million people out of poverty that year and refundable tax credits kept out 6.1 million, while medical bills pushed 7.7 million into it. [19] The figures come before the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps passed in July 2025 take full effect. [19]

Why it matters. Gideon Lukens of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calls 2025 a baseline, so this is the last reading before the food-aid cuts show up in the numbers.