Rocky Mountain Dealerships (RME) reported its second quarter 2019 sales fell by nearly 36% compared to the same period a year ago. Sales for the first half of the year were down by nearly 29%. RME is Canada’s largest agriculture equipment dealership group with Case IH, New Holland and Case Construction equipment as its primary lines of equipment.

New equipment sales during the period declined by nearly 43%, used equipment was off 30%. The group saw small increases in parts and service sales. RME also reported margin improvement in the second quarter of 2.7%, up to 15.3% from 12.6% in the second quarter of 2018.

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Political & Macro-Economic Issues

According to RME, once seeding was completed in the late April — early May timeframe, market sentiment turned sharply negative as a result of broad macro-economic and political uncertainty coupled with significantly reduced sales across all departments. The arrival of spring rains in late June improved sentiment, but these macro uncertainties persisted and continued to weigh on farmer sentiment.

“While some industry fundamentals remain solid, unfortunately, political and macroeconomic issues continue to create significant uncertainty for Canadian farmers and our business. The inability of the Canadian Government to make meaningful progress toward improving international trade relations with several key partners only exacerbates this uncertainty,” says Garrett Ganden, RME’s president and CEO.

Among the issues confronting the Canadian farm equipment dealership group are:

• China: Announced in the spring of 2019 that they would no longer purchase Canadian canola and…