Amy Scott

The thing about the U.S.

Perks says the price of oil might have to hit $200 a barrel to push the U.S.

economy into a recession.

I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace.

We just heard from Justin about how consumers respond to higher oil prices.

Now we turn to Texas, where two critical industries in the state are feeling the impacts of the increased cost of fuel and fertilizer.

Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval has that story.

In an open field in Brazoria County, south of Houston, near the coast, farmer Casey Smith shows me around his newly planted rice crop.

Today, the rice plants are about three inches high.

They look like blades of grass peeking through the dirt.

And they're in tidy rows.

My son actually planted this field.

My 12-year-old, he planted this.

Once this field dries out, Smith will be adding fertilizer.

But when he got a quote for the urea fertilizer he uses, the price per ton jumped about 25 percent since the war started less than three weeks ago.

Add that to the increase in diesel prices, which have gone up by $1.50 or so, and he's looking at tens of thousands of dollars in additional expenses.

Diesel, I mean, it's a big expense.

My farm here, we're typically burning, you know, 20,000 to 25,000 gallons of fuel a year.

Smith loves rice farming, but it's a brutal business.

And now, because of the war in the Middle East, which has constrained the flow of global oil, natural gas, and other petroleum products like fertilizer, Smith worries what this means for his operating costs.