Ag equipment sales were starting to improve in the last few months. Dealer sentiment has been more positive the last several months. All in all, things were starting to look a lot better for the farm equipment world. Then last week, President Donald Trump pledged to impose a 25% tariff on foreign steel that is scheduled to be enacted this week.

The planter market has been a rollercoaster since 2014. Four years ago, if you had a planter larger than a single row you had a hard time getting rid of it. Like other equipment segments, planters were highly produced and the market was flush with inventory.

Like all good relationships, partnerships between shortline farm equipment manufacturers and dealers are a two-way street.

One of the things I’ve pondered for a long time is where the skilled workers that agriculture needs will come from, mostly as it relates to farm equipment dealers. As the overall economy improves, the need for workers will take on a new urgency.

Our database for tractor retail sales and field inventory is derived from AEM’s monthly Flash Reports.

As much as the word “operations” identifies with numbers and benchmark ratios, there’s no way to isolate performance from people. This point was decidedly clear at the recently held Precision Farming Dealer Summit in Louisville, especially in dealer roundtable exchanges.

In 2013, the signs of a looming collapse were becoming clear. In Farm Equipment, Dr. Jim Weber had been writing a series titled “The Business of Selling.” An article from the series “Gathering Storm Clouds” was posted in July 2013. I am paraphrasing but, in the article, Dr. Weber talks about low return on sales, dealerships dependence on volume and market share payments. Because of the low returns, dealerships should have been failing in droves. But because of record high commodity prices, record low interest rates and record on-farm income, dealerships were able to spike margins with new and used wholegoods.

Last month, I challenged dealership leaders to make 2018 the year to invest in human capital. I listed three calls to action and some links to recent relevant articles.

When a new employee starts at your dealership, what’s the onboarding process like? Better yet, is there a process at all? How an employee’s first day goes really sets the tone for what their experience with your dealership is going to be like going forward.

2017 was a paradoxical year with jubilation in the small tractor camp with the larger tractor purveyors significantly less joyous.