In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we look at Compeer Financial and PepsiCo’s pilot program to help lower the cost of strip-till equipment for farmers. In the Technology Corner, Noah Newman visits with Rob Saik, founder and CEO of Vi by VisorPRO. Also in this episode, the number of Big Dealers dropped again in 2026 and the latest Dealer Sentiments Report shows prices were up 1.5% vs. the prior report.

    Associated Equipment Distributors

This episode of On the Record is brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors — the leading association in North America for the equipment distribution industry.  

Get ready for a powerful start to the year with AED’s packed lineup of Q1 and Q2 events designed to connect, educate, and energize industry professionals. From high-impact conferences and hands-on training sessions to exclusive member gatherings and strategic leadership programs, AED is bringing together top experts and forward-thinking dealers to share insights that drive growth. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your team’s skills, stay ahead of emerging trends, or expand your network, our first-half-of-the-year events deliver unmatched opportunities to elevate your business and strengthen your competitive edge. Visit www.aednet.org/ for more information.


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Compeer Financial Teams Up with PepsiCo on Strip-Till Equipment Financing

On June 11, Compeer Financial announced it was teaming up with PepsiCo and other industry partners to offer a pilot leasing program for strip-till equipment, helping offset upfront financial costs for farmers implementing soil conservation practices on their farms.

We caught up with Landon Frye with Compeer’s New Markets department to learn more about the initiative. 

“Yeah, over the past 10 months, PepsiCo and Compeer Financial have worked on a pilot program to deploy their regenerative capital and they make all kinds of investments across US agriculture, but to deploy a specific test where the incentive was tied to the financing of the equipment and we really honed them in on strip tillage specifically. One, it allows for their environmental practices to be measured and managed and meets those standards that they have. But two, and in our research and probably reading some of the things that you guys put out, there was a lot of demand for it organically for farmers via lower inputs, via fewer passes over the field. And that pairing of a technology farmers are chomping at the bid at, so to speak, with something that aligns with what food companies want to achieve, felt like the right place to deploy a million dollars is their initial, we're calling it a pilot, a limited test, a let's prove if this is something that will gain traction and works for everybody and as a win-win-win for both PepsiCo, the farmer and Compeer Financial.”

“And we launched that last Thursday, just announced the fact that we had created this pilot together and we're deploying it primarily in the Central Midwest and have had great traction here even in the first couple days of talking about it publicly.”

Through RegenLend, Compeer Financial will lease the equipment to farmers, and PepsiCo will cover two annual lease payments to share the cost of investment with farmers. Strip-till equipment can get expensive and can be a limiting factor in a farmer’s decision to move to strip-till. But, this program helps lower that cost, Frye says. 

“We believe so. We conducted several surveys and tried to understand as best we could what the market would really take seriously and would defray and reduce the cost of some of these investments. But to launch a pilot in a reasonable timeframe, some of it has to operate off the gut. And we just felt that the high price tag for strip tillage was another attribute that reducing the cost of it by 35% would certainly not bring it down to being cheap by any measure, but would have a lot of interest and pull.”

In its initial pilot year, the RegenLend program is available to farmers interested in leasing strip-till equipment to implement soil conservation practices on at least 600 acres. 

Commodity Ticker 

As of June 17, corn prices were $4.21 down 10 cents from our last episode. Soybeans closed at $11.32, down 22 cents. Wheat closed at $6.12, up a quarter and Class III milk prices closed at $16.04, down 65 cents. 

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Dealers Gather for Inaugural AI Workshop & Networking Event

Leaders from AgRevolution, Agriteer, Young’s Equipment, LoneStar Ag, KanEquip and more gathered in Rosemont, Ill., for the inaugural ViNE Event, hosted by the Vi by visorPRO team. The event featured dealer-focused educational and interactive sessions on the challenges, benefits and best practices for implementing AI at the dealership. Rob Saik, founder and CEO of Vi by visorPRO, says the idea for the event came about during a discussion with Brion Torgerson from Torgerson’s Equipment in Great Falls, Mont.

“At the Precision Farming Dealer Summit in St. Louis in January, I was on stage and we talked about having an AI academy for dealerships,” Saik says. “It was in Montana when I was talking about AI and visorPRO at one of the dealerships, Brion Torgerson came up to me and said, ‘We need more than using visorPRO, we also need to think about AI integration.’ And that was the genesis of the idea. So, we took that idea and decided to move forward with a very select and small group of dealers to talk about AI leadership inside of dealerships, what they're doing, how they're implementing it, where the gaps are, where do they want to go. And so that's why we invited people from Texas and Saskatchewan and Kentucky and Pennsylvania and Indiana and Ohio here to talk about that at the dealership level.

“One of the things we shared this morning is of course the industry is undergoing constraints right now. And so how do we use technology to level up our people, do more with less, do more faster? AI is capable of doing that. And to think about AI as an operating system for the dealership with pipelines coming in to the operating system and output depending on what department, whether it's aftermarket sales, whether it's finance or admin, like what do you want coming out of AI? And it really is not so much an AI discussion as it's a data discussion.”

Saik also offered some words of advice for dealers interested in implementing AI.

“The key is just to start,” he says. “So, if somebody hasn't even played with AI at all and they're wondering, should I go to Claude and Anthropic or should I go to OpenAI, Grok or Gemini? The answer is yes. But a good starting point that I've used with a lot of people is Perplexity. Just download Perplexity. And once you download Perplexity, which has a lot of the frontier models built into it, you'll use Perplexity and you'll never go back to Google search because Perplexity has a reference beside every single line in it and that's like visorPRO, which will not fabricate an answer. VisorPRO is going to pull the information from the original equipment manufacturer, the mainline or shortline is going to combine that with the legacy work orders from the dealer management system and combine that with dealership knowledge in that ‘dealer vault’ to extract information necessary to solve a service or parts problem.”

Stay tuned for more coverage from the ViNE Event and AI insights gleaned in the coming days on PrecisionFarmingDealer.com.

Number of Big Dealers Drops in 2026

As consolidation continues to impact the ag equipment industry, the number of big dealers in North America dropped again for the 4th year in a row in 2026. After rising to a record high of 214 big dealers (dealers that operate 5 or more ag locations) in 2022, the industry now has 199 dealers with 5 or more ag equipment locations. The total number of ag equipment stores owned by big dealers dropped in 2026, after 3 consecutive years of increases, falling to 2,774 from 2,781 in 2025. 

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Deere once again has the most big dealers at 77. Deere’s total number of big dealers had been declining since 2020. In 2020, Deere had 96 big dealers. That number fell consistently over the last 5 years to the current low of 77 in 2026. 

Case IH also saw its dealer network drop in its number of big dealers, falling from 42 in 2025 to 39 in 2026. The number of Case IH big dealers peaked in 2022 at 49. The number of New Holland big dealers increased by 6 year-over-year to 36, the highest number of big dealers the brand has had since the Ag Equipment Intelligence started tracking in 2011. 

AGCO and Kubota both saw their big dealers increase by 1 to 21 and 37, respectively. Compared to 2011, when the Big Dealer Report was first published, the total number of big dealers in the industry has risen 16.4% from 171. During that time, Deere, Case IH and AGCO have all seen the number of big dealers in their networks decline. 

Kubota has seen the most significant growth in its number of big dealers since 2012, increasing by 164% during that period. New Holland has seen the next largest jump in the number of big dealers, growing 140% since the first report. Deere has seen the largest decline in the number of big dealers, shrinking by 26% since 2012. 

The complete Big Dealer Report was sent to AEI VIP members earlier this month and is available for purchase on AgEquipmentIntelligence.com.

Dealers Report Pricing Up 1.5% vs. Last Year 

According to the latest Dealer Sentiments report, dealers say price contribution was up about 1.5% year-over-year compared to up about 1% the month prior. 

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Dealer commentary suggests that incentive programs appear to be decelerating slightly month-over-month across OEMs despite soft farmer sentiment and purchasing. 

Survey respondents suggest OEMs likely passed along 2-3% market year 2026 price increases on average, partially offset by OEM/dealer incentive programs. 

One dealer said, “OEM financing programs appear rather dismal at this point on both large and small ag equipment.” 

Another dealer said, “The market remains cautious. We are starting to have EOP/pre-sale conversations, however, farmers are reluctant to commit to purchases. We think 2026 will be the bottom of the cycle and only expect minimal recovery in 2027.” 

DataPoint: Impact Iran Conflict Will Have on Farm Net Income

This week’s DataPoint is brought to you by the Dealership Minds Summit, Aug. 4-5 in Springfield, Ill. View the program and register at DealershipMindsSummit.com

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In the June Ag Economy Barometer from Purdue University and CME Group, producers were asked what impact the Iran conflict will have on their farm’s net income in 2026. 

Similar to the results from April, approximately two-thirds of the respondents expected their net farm income to decline in 2026 due to the Iran conflict, which began in late February. Of those, 52.8% said the conflict would have a negative impact, with another 13% saying it would have a very negative impact. While 21% said it would have no impact, just over 13% said it would have either a positive or very positive impact on their farm. 

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