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CNH Doubles Down on Precision Tech

May 23, 2025

In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we take a look at CNH Industrial’s goals for growing its precision business by 2030. In the Technology Corner, Noah Newman looks into why more precision technology is showing up on smaller farms. Also in this episode, Russia’s largest ag manufacturer halts production and Titan Machinery’s first quarter ag revenues drop 14%.

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TRANSCRIPT

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CNH Put Focus on Precision R&D Technology Stack

CNH Industrial’s target is to raise ag segment operating margins from about 12.5% in 2024 to 16-17% by 2030 and a key component to achieving that is precision technology, notes analyst Shane Thomas in Upstream Ag Insights. 

“CNH Industrial has been the one player of the big three OEMs that has shared relatively little about its precision ag strategy and initiatives — until now,” Thomas said. 

CNH has nearly doubled its R&D and capital expenditures since 2019. With a $924 million R&D budget, the OEM is now allocating 25% — or about $230 million — to precision technology. In 2024, CNH spent 4.5% of revenue — or $924 million — on R&D. Thomas notes that the R&D pipeline supports over 70 new product launches across tractors, combines, crop production tools and precision tech by the end of 2027.

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CNH’s reported  2024 precision ag revenue of $784 million, which represented 5.6% of its total revenue, and it targets ~10% of revenue by 2030. “At flat levels from 2024 would mean ~$1.5 billion,” Thomas noted. 

CNH builds approximately 80% of its precision technology stack in-house today, with plans to increase this to 90% by 2030, Thomas noted. “This internalization is intended to accelerate integration, performance and farmer usability. This is up from 25% in 2019 (pre-Raven, Augmenta and Hemisphere acquisitions),” he said. 

CNH lacks in-house green-on-green technology and instead will rely on the ONE Smart Spray JV from Bosch and BASF. Thomas said, “This is seemingly a pointed strategic move suggesting they do not envision the market drastically moving in the direction of advanced green-on-green spraying for herbicides, or beyond.”

During the investor day, CNH reinforced its preference not to pursue recurring revenue models in its precision and autonomy segments. “CNH autonomy outlook for 2030 was notably not ‘full cycle’ across an entire cropping system and merely autonomous tillage 5 years from now, suggesting they are less bullish on full autonomy,” Thomas said.

Dealers on the Move

This week’s Dealer on the Move is Premier Equipment. The Ontario-based John Deere dealer has acquired the John Deere dealership business of Deerhaven Farm and Garden, effective July 31. 

Why More Precision Technology is Showing up on Smaller Farms 

I spent the morning in the field with Jonathan Born, regional product support specialist for John Deere dealer PrairieLand Partners in Iola, Kan. As he was installing JDLink Boost on a Fendt tractor, I asked him if technology adoption trends have shifted in the past few years. He says the one big thing he’s noticed is that it’s not just the high-acreage farmers who are buying in.    

“I feel like the technology is more accessible to guys who are smaller-scale, and it could be those guys who are smaller-scale, their sons and grandsons are coming in who want all the cool stuff. They find ways to get the technology (to the farm). The thing that I’ve seen over time is it used to be just the big guys who had the technology…but now that is being transitioned to the basics — autosteer, section control — and now we’re getting into StarLink, in field data share, AutoTrac turn automation, etc. Those are the newer technologies that typically the bigger guys have, but we’re filtering that (other technologies) down to those little guys, so that AutoTrac, section control, etc., everyone has now.” 

We’ll have much more from Born in an upcoming Day in the Cab feature on PrecisionFarmingDealer.com

Tracking Crop Prices

As of May 21, corn prices were $4.61 up 12 cents from our last episode two weeks ago. Soybeans closed at $10.62, up 23 cents. And Wheat closed at $5.49, up 15 cents. 

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Russian Combine Manufacturer Halts Production

Russia’s largest ag machinery manufacturer, Rostelmash, announced it is suspending production due to falling demand, according to reports.

Rostelmash will stop production in June and will send its employees on vacation to reduce costs, Reuters reports, noting that the corporate vacation season typically fall in August and September

In a statement the company said: “This measure is forced and is due to the current economic situation in the agricultural sector. Farmers do not have the funds to purchase the equipment they need, which leads to a significant decline in the market.”

Demand for agricultural machinery in Russia is falling due to expensive loans, due to the high discount rate of the central bank, according to UkrAgroConsult. In addition, Russian producers are facing challenges from high export duties, as well as rising prices for fuel and fertilizers, which makes agriculture unprofitable in many regions of Russia.

According to Rostselmash, sales of Russian agricultural machinery manufacturers fell by 76% for combines, by 49% for forage harvesters and by 48% for tractors compared to the same period in 2021.

As reported, Rostselmash has laid off about 2,000 employees since last fall.

UkrAgroConsult reports that in recent years, the leading Russian agricultural machinery manufacturer has been a beneficiary of the boom in Russian agriculture. The organization says that, “Thanks to cheap loans for Russian farmers, it has also successfully squeezed out foreign competitors, but the Russian government has curtailed most of the preferential lending programs in this area due to the increase in spending on the war in Ukraine.”

Titan Ag Revenue Drops 14% in Q1

Case IH dealership group Titan Machinery reported its first quarter earnings for fiscal year 2026 on April 22. Ag segment revenues for the quarter were down 14.1% to $384.4 million. 

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The dealership notes that the revenue decrease resulted from a softening of demand for equipment, driven by the decline in net farm income and sustained high interest rates. Pre-tax loss for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 was $12.8 million, compared to $13.0 million of pre-tax income in the first quarter last year.

Cash at the end of the first quarter  was $21.5 million. Inventories were flat at $1.1 billion as of April 30, 2025 compared to January 31, 2025. Outstanding floorplan payables were $769.6 million on $1.5 billion total available floorplan and working capital lines of credit as of April 30, 2025, compared to $755.7 million outstanding floorplan payables as of January 31, 2025.

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Baird analyst Mig Dobre noted that total equipment inventories were lowered by $12.5 million sequentially to $913.4 billion  — down 25.5% year-over-year.  New equipment inventory declined $900 thousand, while used equipment inventory declined by $11.5 million on a sequential basis. Dobre says, “Though the inventory decline was smaller than observed in 3Q and 4Q, we note that 1Q is typically a stocking quarter; the ability to destock vs. a normal seasonal inventory build is a positive in our view.”

DataPoint: Corn Yield Averages by Country: 2023 Market Year Yield Data

This week’s DataPoint is brought to you by the Dealership Minds Summit, coming to Iowa City, July 29-30. To register, visit DealershipMindsSummit.com.

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While the U.S. and Canada top the corn producing-nations at an average of 179 and 158 bushels per acre, respectively, the averages outside of the U.S. are just 59 bushels, representing a tremendous amount of potential for technology refinement and growth, says biofuels company Poet. (Note: The outlier is Turkey, which farms only 1 million acres and is 100% irrigated


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Kim Schmidt

Kim Schmidt is the Executive Editor of Farm Equipment and the host of Ag Equipment Intelligence’s On The Record. An award-winning writer, she worked 7 years in business-to-business trade media before joining Lessiter Media in 2012. She is a journalism graduate of Marquette University.

Contact: kschmidt@lessitermedia.com