In Illinois, Governor Pritzker's executive order specifically stated that the Department of Revenue and the state police shall not enforce-

enforce-The current law for testing of diesel fuel until, of course, the December 31st.

Now, you're still liable for paying the tax, so there again, it would take the General Assembly to come in and say, "No, we're gonna waive that tax." And so there would have to be a change in law.

So that's where all this uncertainty comes from.

So right now, our recommendation is, is that you be careful, uh, you make a conscious decision in what you're going to do.

The federal tax is deferred, so you may have to pay that back.

Technically, you're gonna be running red dyed diesel.

And at the farmer level, you talked to, um, President Nelson, uh, on his LaSalle County farm, and you talked about how this could affect an average producer utilizing diesel on their farm.

Back on RFD Illinois, I'm Rita Frazer with Kevin Semlow, Executive Director, Governmental Affairs and Commodities, IFB, making sense of the diesel news this week.

We in the business, of course, have long time have referred to there's diesel fuel, and there's what we call red dye diesel.

That's the short term for non-taxed motor fuel for off-road use, and it's used for farming and construction equipment.

Been a long standard to have those things around.

There's always been an understanding of how that process works.

We all know that the red dye kind of s- lingers in the fuel tank, which it's supposed to, and it will linger in a tank for many, many gas fuelings.

It takes anywhere between seven and eight times to run clean fuel through a system to get it below the measure that the Department of Revenue and the IRS tests for.

Tuesday evening, Governor Pritzker for the state of Illinois also issued an executive order.

Does that resonate with what you're hearing from the farmers you talked to?

Yeah, we're seeing some very financially difficult times for farmers.

As Tara had pointed out, low commodity prices, high input costs.

I mean, even if we look currently at diesel fuel prices, which is one of the bigger inputs that our members have to deal with are extremely high.

But since we've seen a downturn in the farm economy in the last couple of years, this is a compounding problem.

As farmers are able to use their positive resources from good years, those reserves are drawing down.

And most farmers go out and get an operating loan every year through their bank to help do that.

Maybe you can talk more about sort of what's behind what's been happening here.