The limited cash available to farmers and ranchers in the U.S. will continue to put a dampener on the equipment markets in 2018 and 2019. The expanded depreciation programs that appeared in 2010 and reached its zenith in 2014 had the effect of pulling ahead purchases from future years. We are now enduring the results of that program.
This summer, my dad (Frank), Darren Foster and I tagged along with the first group of VIP dealers and customers that converged on Downs, Ill., for a look at Horsch’s brand new Ag Vision Farm, which was purchased earlier this year from Beck’s Hybrids.
Early on in my days on the Farm Equipment staff, the editorial and art departments were huddled around a board of potential covers for the magazine. The details of what happened next are a little fuzzy, but are now office lore.
Let’s face it. No compromise is going to be good enough for those who are demanding total access to the software that has been developed to make everything work together on today’s tractors. It’s an all or nothing deal. But you have to give the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF), which represents farmers, and Far West Equipment Dealers Assn. (FWEDA), which represents dealers, credit for trying.
Steel and aluminum prices will most certainly result in an increase in all farm equipment prices next year but our agricultural economy has been able to overcome those increases in the past and will most likely do so in the future.
I was curious to see what the price increase has been for combines over the past 3 model changes. I looked through the business system, locating customers who have rolled combines every year, trying to see how pricing has evolved over the last decade. What I found was not all that shocking, but at the same time I have to wonder how long trading the volume of equipment with high used pricing can be sustained.
Biomethane is methodically finding its way into mainstream fuel supplies as tech giants and others invest to claim “carbon neutrality” in their supply chain.
I challenged readers of this column to “Make 2018 the Year of Human Capital Investment.” Training is likely a key part of your human capital investment. Below is a professional perspective on how to make training work and how to make it pay from one of my Machinery Advisors Consortium colleagues, Daniel Surprenant. — George Russell
One of the benefits of covering an industry like farm equipment is learning from some great business minds. That, and tapping into free consulting in the name of business journalism. I do file away your wisdom from our interviews, and several of you even taken my calls when I’m looking to calibrate our thinking over here. While our industries are different, many of the people challenges are the same, and I will take a sound and trusted lens-adjustment from any corner.
In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we look at President Trump's tariff reduction on ag equipment, the latest dealer sales forecasts, and how high input costs are keeping farmer sentiment down.
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