Most of the numbers are in on farm machinery sales in 2018 and, all in all, it wasn’t too bad of a year for many/most equipment dealers and manufacturers.

In this guest blog, industry consultant Stan Jackson weighs in on the a recent Farm Equipment article, “Looking Back What Happened to Equipment Manufacturers in the Early 1980s Farm Crisis,” providing input from personal experience on how Deere was able to survive the crisis.

It’s been just over a year since Case IH’s revised sales and service agreement was making waves. At that time, Matthew Larsgaard, president/CEO of the North Dakota Implement Dealers Assn., highlighted 11 provisions that represent major concerns in the agreement that dealers needed to be aware of. Since then, dealer purity issues haven’t been making much noise.

The past month and a half has been interesting for North American agriculture. Numerous positive signals have been showing up in various ag segments almost since the beginning of the year. Their duration hasn’t been long enough to classify them as trends or to build solid confidence in the longer term. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a little optimism.