In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we report from the Farm Progress Show, with an interview from Claas’ Eric Raby. In the Technology Corner, Noah Newman reports on InnerPlant’s groundbreaking CropVoice technology. Also in this episode, an update on interest rate cuts from AgDirect’s Greg Roberg and Duo Lift gets into the retail dealer business.

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TRANSCRIPT

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Impact of Tariffs Still to be Seen

Claas CEO Jan-Hendrik Mohr was on site here at the Farm Progress Show this week and says the German manufacturer is committed long-term to the North American market, as can be seen by the launch of its new Jaguar 1000 series forage harvester in the U.S. Mohr says the U.S. is the largest forage harvester market. 

This week Claas also announced the groundbreaking on a new 44,800 square foot Research and Development Center in Omaha. At the Farm Progress Show, Mohr stressed the new R&D center has nothing to do with tariffs and said Claas is here in the U.S. “for the long-term.’

I caught up with Eric Raby, Claas Senior Vice President for the Americas Region, during the show. He says while the R&D center wasn’t in response to tariffs, Claas is feeling some tariff related pressures.

Eric Raby: Our fiscal year, it ends actually at the end of September, but our quarter one is everybody else's quarter three or four, whatever. But if I look at it, certainly pressure on the commodity side of things. Inputs have stabilized a little bit from what we saw back in the COVID days or whatever. But I think the other thing is some of the unknowns are still out there. And as an example, interest rates. I think there's still this, I would say, collective thinking that the Fed is going to make a move. It might be a small one, but I think it at least gives us signal to people that things are starting to improve. However, having said that, I still think that we're going to stay in a, I would say, a pressured market for at least another couple of quarters before we start to see a large amount of resurgence.

Kim Schmidt: Even so if we get... It sounds like everyone's pretty confident September we're getting a cut.

Eric Raby: Yeah, 25 basis points.

Kim Schmidt: And then maybe there's potential for another in December. Do you think it's still not enough to make a huge impact?

Eric Raby: I think it'll make some difference, but I think the other thing that's going to need to happen too is we're going to need to see some movement in commodity prices, and usually that's going to happen after we get on the way through harvest. The USDA comes out, it's good or bad, and they temporarily drop, oh, it's the best corn crop we've ever had. Well, darn, that just drives them rise down. But when you have a good yield, irrespective of pricing, it still is better than having a bad yield. But we'll have to see what does the long-term or the midterm look like for corn? What does it look like for beans? Those are the two most important crops that we're dealing with in this. And I think the other one is what is the impact, especially in the equipment business with the tariffs? We kind of got through with some of the major markets.

We have an agreement with the EU, we have an agreement with Canada, some of those major markets that we deal with, so that's good. But now we have another steel and aluminum tariff that is quite significant and it not only affects... Regardless of where you're from, it affects everyone in the industry. I think everyone's trying to come to terms with how does that look? How do we work on that? Because that's a significant thing that I don't think we've fully overcome yet, and that could actually have somewhat of a negative effect, I hate to say. It depends on how it actually ends up. We'll see in the next couple of weeks if there's any changes.

Dealers on the Move

This week’s Dealer on the Move is Vanderloop Equipment. The Wisconsin AGCO dealer has taken on the Manitou line at its 3 locations.

InnerPlant CropVoice Detects Crop Stress Within Hours of Emergence 

We head inside the Varied Industries tent at the 2025 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Ill., for a look at InnerPlant’s groundbreaking CropVoice technology. The seed technology company launched the first-of-its-kind platform, powered by a network of plots featuring InnerSoy — a soybean engineered to signal when it’s under attack from fungus, giving farmers and agronomists access to stress signals directly from plants. Sean Yokomizo, VP of Communications, gives us a live demo at the InnerPlant booth. 

"What we have here is a traditional soybean, and when I laze it, you can see the chlorophyll fluorescence, so if we went outside and looked at the corn, looked at the grass, you'd see this red glow because that's just chlorophyll. But over here you can see the inner soy inner plant signal, which is the plant saying, "Hey, I've activated genes in my immune system to fight off fungus. I'm infected, come help me." What that looks like commercially is we create a fungal detection network similar to a cell network. Instead of cell towers, we build plots using this sensor to create a network of plots that are imaged twice a day by this machine. And when we see a signal like the bright green on the left-hand side of the screen, we know that there's a fungal infection in that area and we alert farmers via text or John Deere operation center that they have an infection near their field."

"And because it's tied to the plant's immune system, it's weeks before they see the symptoms in the field, so they have plenty of time to take action to preserve their yields. This year has been amazing. We're covering 50,000 acres in our initial year. We had actually the world's first detection of an active fungal infection in real time, first time in 10,000 years of agriculture that's happened. We detected it in July in Northeast Nebraska, an active fungal infection. We notified the farmers and we actually have control plots in that area, so four and a half weeks after we notified those farmers, we actually saw white mold symptoms in our fields, so the farmers that we alerted had a four and a half week head start to take action in their field to preserve their yields."

InnerPlant CropVoice has covered 50,000 acres in its first year of commercial availability so far.

Tracking Crop Prices 

 As of August 26, corn prices were $3.87 up 8 cents from our last episode. Soybeans closed at $10.28, up 63 cents. And wheat closed at $5.00, up 1 cent.

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Outlook for an Interest Rate Cut Increasingly Positive 

On Friday, August 22, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell in his annual address at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, symposium, said conditions “may warrant adjusting our policy stance,” suggesting a rate cut is likely coming in September. 

I caught up with AgDirect’s Greg Roberg here at the Farm Progress Show to get some insights on what that means for dealers and the farm equipment industry.

"Everyone wants to know when our interest rate's going to go down, myself included being in the finance industry, so we got a little bit of good news, I believe last week. Chairman Powell was at Jackson Hole, Wyoming which he always does in August, and he gave some sentiment that we're seeing a little bit of decline in job growth and possibly the economy's slowing a little bit that maybe we didn't anticipate at this point in time. And hinted, hinted, that's a big word, that we may see a cut in September and the market took that as good news. The Dow Jones went up over 800 points. Treasuries dropped, so that indicates that we are going to get a drop in September. I believe they meet around September 17th, so we'll see today as we stand here at the Farm Progress Show, there's a 90% chance based on what the economists are saying, that we'll see at least a quarter percent drop in September."

"That's what we know today. It ebbs and flows. Inflation's still at 2.8, 2.9 roughly, so the mandate for the Fed is under 2%, but it does show some indications that maybe inflation has flattened and some signs that the economy is slowing, so we'll see. I would say that there is a very good chance we'll get at least a quarter in September. The Fed meets eight times a year. This will be their sixth meeting, so they'll meet again the end of October, like the 29th. They don't meet in November, and then they meet again in December. My personal opinion is we'll get that quarter in September. We won't get anything in October. We take November off, and we may see another quarter in December, but that's what my crystal ball says today here as we stand at the Farm Progress Show."

Duo Lift Acquires Linco-Precision, Enters Shortline Dealer Landscape 

Shortline ag equipment manufacturer Duo Lift is entering the retail dealer side of the business. 

In an exclusive interview with Ag Equipment Intelligence, owners David and Ben Hellbusch say their Columbus-Nebraska business has acquired the assets of Linco-Precision in El Paso, Ill. 

The shortline dealership will operate under the new name of DL Shortline.

Linco’s primary lines included Duo Lift, Brehmer, Walinga and New Leader equipment. While the opportunity to acquire the business from owner Skip Klinefelter emerged in late July, the Hellbusches, who also operate distributor Busch Equipment, say they’ve been considering entering the retail business for nearly 2 decades.

Ben Hellbusch: "It presented a unique opportunity that we could take a business that we already know and enhance it with other products and other things, but we also were working in a core space with our manufacturing products that made this decision a little bit easier than a dealership affiliated with a major or something along those lines. It's a shortline oriented business. We're a shortline manufacturer and we deal with a lot of other shortline manufacturers and different businesses that we have. So we felt like, man, if there was ever a time where we should give this a crack, this is fitting the bill of all the things that we talked about for the last couple of decades."

Dan Hellbusch: "They've been one of our customers for over 40 years. They've always been on the top echelon of our customer base inside of our fertilizer products. Like Ben said, it's a natural fit for us. If we were going to go down the dealership path, it's something we were comfortable, we knew a lot of the people that worked here. We've known a lot of those guys for a long time, and so it's been a good fit for that reason."

DataPoint: Growing Demand for U.S. Ethanol 

This week’s DataPoint is brought to you by the Precision Farming Dealer Summit, coming to St. Louis Jan. 5-6. To learn more visit PrecisionSummit.com 

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According to USDA, total demand for U.S. fuel ethanol has grown since 2016. Data from March 2025 showed the U.S. average blend rate was 10.1%, the ninth consecutive month above the implied minimum Federal blend rate of 10%, while the 12-month moving average blend rate stood at 10.2%. The average blend rate has largely been at 10% or higher since 2020. Increasing blend rates have helped maintain domestic ethanol consumption at a steady level despite reduced demand for finished motor gasoline. Moreover, since 2023, international demand for ethanol has steadily risen and provided additional support for U.S. fuel ethanol production. In March 2025, U.S. ethanol exports rose to their fifth-highest monthly total of all time —1 96 million gallons, up from 110 million gallons in March 2016 — pushing the 12-month-average export level to a record-high 167 million gallons.

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