Farm Equipment Sales See First Decline in Months

Haylie Shipp

A downturn in equipment sales? Well – kind of sort of. According to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), ag tractor and combine unit sales showed their first monthly decline since July 2021. It happened last month. U.S. total farm tractor sales fell 21.1 percent for the month of March. Curt Blades with AEM says it’s a report they expected noting that inventory levels are down more than 10%.

So to put it simply, you can’t sell what you don’t have and, as he said, you likely can’t buy like you’ve always bought…

“Where we've had the luxury in the past of you could drive by a dealer lot, see a tractor and potentially take it home later on that week, I think those days might be behind us. So, working closely with a dealer, working closely with the manufacturer in anticipating your equipment needs, is a really critical step that farmers need to take. And certainly, be able to take advantage of some of this cutting-edge technology and having a plan for how to integrate it into your farming operation, that’s what we encourage farmers to do. That discipline is probably here with us for a while and I wouldn't say that’s a bad thing, I'd say that's a good thing that farmers and dealers and manufacturers working closer together to ensure that they have the equipment that they need to put the crop in the ground to feed the world.”

One exception in that report…the 100+ horsepower two-wheel-drive sector did see a growth of 7% in the U.S. market.