Gas prices hit 2nd straight daily record

Retail gasoline prices have jumped to yet another record high, drivers' advocacy group AAA's Web site showed Friday.
The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline rose 2.6 cents to $3.671, breaking the record set the previous day. It was the second day in a row that gas prices set a record, and follows a 17-day streak of record-breaking days that ended May 1.
Prices at the pump have been soaring. Drivers now pay, on average, 21% more than they did a year ago, when a gallon of gas cost $3.037, according to AAA.
The price of gas has been pushed up by record high crude prices. Crude futures hit an all-time trading high of $124.93 in electronic trading early Friday.
Farmers feel the pain
The high price of gas has burdened motorists and truckers.
It's also put the squeeze on thousands of farmers.
They drive tractors up and down row after row of field after field to plow, seed and tend to their crops. That means they shell out big bucks for gas and diesel, which set its own record Friday at $4.269 a gallon - and there's no end in sight.
Bill Olthoff, a farmer and member of the board of directors of the Illinois Farm Bureau, says a tanker of diesel cost him $4,000 about 10 years ago. Now he pays $30,000 for a tanker, which lasts him through the year at his farm in Bourbonnais, Ill.
It's the same story for Jack Erisman, owner of Goldmine Farms in Pana, Ill.
He paid $2.48 a gallon for gas last year, compared with $3.73 a gallon these days.
Both Erisman and Olthoff said other items have increased 50% or more in price this year. A sack of seed corn was $25 but it cost $200 this year.
To save costs, some farmers have refrained from tilling the land before planting. Instead, they run over corn stalks and plant new seeds at the same time - the farming equivalent of combining trips to the grocery store with other errands to save some cash on gas.
One farmer said the Amish might have the right idea - plowing fields using horses and old plows cuts out the fuel bill.
That would be tough, however, on a 22,000-acre farm like the one that Erisman owns.