Oregon Public Broadcasting

In cities across the Northwest, people are trying to conserve fuel. But in rural areas, farmers say there's little they can do.

Red fuel, or diesel only used on the farm, costs about $4.25 a gallon right now in the Yakima Valley.

Mike Corrales grows hay, corn and wheat on his farm north of Pasco. He says he still needs to run his tractors daily to bring in his crops.

Mike Corrales: "We pre-buy a lot of our inputs --  our fertilizer, our fuel -- we try to do that in the winter and the early spring to catch some lows in the market. But we’re not mind readers. We don’t know where the market is going to go."

Corrales uses a tanker truck of diesel a month. The only good news for farmers is that corn, wheat and hay are reaping record profits. But Corrales says he’s worried about when commodity prices come back down.