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Fuel & Transport

Growing food takes diesel — on the farm and on the road. This page holds how much fuel farming uses, how food moves, and what canola gives back if New Zealand grew its own fuel. Distances are the study's own assumptions — the natural place for your local figures.

Calculated fuel relationships — update as you change the settings below
1 ha of canola gives
—
diesel-equivalent per year
Canola for 1 M L diesel
—
before the fuel-loop
Fuel loop — first approx.
+5.17%
baseline; rises with yield loss (≈+14% severe winter)
Road fuel
—
per loaded round-trip km
At paper values, one hectare of canola yields ≈ 1,227 L of diesel-equivalent biodiesel.
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On-farm diesel

Paper default

Litres of diesel to farm one hectare for one year — tractors, cultivation, harvest. Potatoes are the thirstiest of the foods; wheat the leanest. Canola's own farming diesel is what makes the biofuel loop recursive.

Wheat — L/ha43
Potatoes — L/ha118
Dairy — L/ha55
Canola — L/ha62
Worth knowing: the wheat and potato figures are Australian national averages1 used as an NZ proxy; dairy is derived from NZ sector fuel totals ÷ dairy area;2 canola is an international figure.3 Honest to cite, fair to question.

Future addition: NZ-measured field figures per crop; electrified machinery scenarios.

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Transport

Paper default

Moving harvest from farm to processing. The study tested 20, 50 and 100 km round trips4 with one truck type: 34,500 kg payload,5 28,000 L milk tanker,6 burning 0.549 L/km.7

Round-trip distance — kmpaper tested: 20 · 50 · 100
Truck payload — kg34,500
Fuel use — L per 1,000 km549 (= 0.549 L/km)
Worth knowing: the distances are the study's own assumption ("land close to processing is prioritised") — not a logistics study. One truck model stands for all produce; the same tanker is assumed for milk and biodiesel. This box is where your own local distances belong.

Future addition: vehicle mix, rail and coastal shipping; fuel use entered as L/km directly.

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Canola → biodiesel

Paper default

The fuel-independence chain: canola seed (3,100 kg/ha8) is crushed to oil (0.40 kg oil per kg seed9), converted 1:1 to biodiesel by volume (oil weighs 0.909 kg/L10), then discounted ×0.90 for lower energy density.11

Canola seed yield — kg / ha / yearpaper: 3,100 (conservative)
Oil yield — % of seed40
Energy factor — %90
Worth knowing: the 1:1 oil→biodiesel volume and the −10% energy discount are deliberately conservative estimates, not measurements. The fuel-loop (canola to grow the canola) is counted once — ≈+5% at baseline, rising in severe scenarios (a first approximation, as in the paper).12
Resolved (22 Jul 2026): the small gap (≈0.15%) between the tool's canola base figures and the paper's Tables 4–5 was traced to display rounding in Table 2 — the paper's tables were computed with the unrounded dairy diesel rate (54.913 L/ha, shown as 55). Agreed with the study authors, the engine now uses the unrounded value and matches Table 4 exactly.

Future addition: refinery capacity & processing energy; deeper recursion as a research toggle.

⠿ Boxes are self-contained settings modules — drag a header to reorder. The same module can be placed on any page of the builder later.

References for this page

  1. Chen et al. (2015) — wheat 43 L/ha and potatoes 118 L/ha, Australian national averages (Table 2).
  2. Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (2021) + LIC (2020) — dairy 55 L/ha, derived from sector off-road diesel ÷ dairy area (Table 2).
  3. Baquero et al. (2011) — canola 62 L/ha (Table 2).
  4. Boyd et al. (2024), Table 2 — "we tested three different distances, assuming land close to processing facilities is prioritized."
  5. Verran (2023) — Scania/Hino 700, 53 t GVM, 34.5 t payload (Table 2).
  6. Chandar (2022) — Fonterra standard 28,000 L tanker; same volume assumed for biodiesel (Table 2).
  7. Wang et al. (2019) — 0.549 L/km real-world fuel economy, heaviest GVM class (Table 2).
  8. FAO — canola seed yield 3,100 kg/ha; an NZ farm has reported 6,300 kg/ha, so this is conservative (Table 2).
  9. Pure Oil NZ, via Chalmers (2015) — 90 t seed → 36 t oil per day (Table 2).
  10. USDA — canola oil 0.909 kg/L (Table 2).
  11. JD Supra (2021) — biodiesel energy density −8.5% to −4.7%; the paper's −10% is conservative (Table 2).
  12. Boyd et al. (2024), p.7 — recursive canola taken to first approximation only: a single +5.17% iteration.

In the full builder, all references live on one dedicated page; boxes carry only the small numbers.