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Equipment manufacturers report uptick in 2018 machinery sales

A combine on display at the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, Illinois

An equipment manufacturers group says despite the down economy, farmers are investing in more new equipment.

Curt Blades with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers tells Brownfield he’s pleasantly surprised to see the equipment market remain stable and even grow in some categories.  He says there have even been some bright spots such as the nearly 20% year-over-year increase in combine sales.  “There’s not a lot of combines sold, but we sold about 700 combines more in 2018 than we did in 2017, so that’s a pretty good indication that there’s some farmers that are actually feeling comfortable about what the future of the ag economy is going to be moving forward.”

And he says, along with the cyclical nature of machinery purchases, there may have been other influencing factors pushing combine sales. “Maybe they were looking to buy a new combine next year, maybe they sped up that purchase just a little bit so they could take advantage of it during this late fall harvest. There’s also some implications of the tax reform we saw come out about this time last year and some farmers finding some opportunities to take advantages of the changes in the tax law.”

The AEM study shows more than 48-hundred new combines were sold last year, along with 27-hundred four-wheel drive tractors, and 233-thousand two-wheel drive tractors. 

Sixty-six percent of the new two-wheel drive tractors sold in 2018 were under 40 horsepower, and Blades says many of them were not sold to farms.

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