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Blades: Tractor sales indicate farmer sentiment is up
Tractor and combine sales in the US and Canada are still climbing after 12 months, according to the latest report from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
Curt Blades, senior vice president of agriculture with AEM, says the continued growth reflects farmer sentiment.
“A farmer is not buying a tractor for use over the next month, they’re buying a tractor for the use over the next five to 10 years,” he says. “So, they have to feel pretty good about the future of the agriculture industry and their business individually for them to make those capital investments. I always encourage people to look at those tractor and combine sales as a pretty good indication of where farmer sentiment is today, where there attitude of the futures are, and if you look at those numbers, I think there’s a lot of optimism out there.”
U.S. farm tractor sales rose nearly 23 percent in April compared to 2020.
Blades tells Brownfield he was looking forward to the April results to see if the 12-month growth trend would hold steady.
“Lat year in March we saw a noticeable drop because the economy basically shut down for a couple of weeks and so we wanted to look at those April numbers to see how strong they came back to really prove that this 12-month trend was in fact real and we’re proud to say that after looking at the April numbers that’s the case,” he says.
Under-40-horsepower tractors were up nearly 21 percent and over-100-horsepower tractors were up 29 percent. Blades says the market for small tractors has strengthened.
U.S. self-propelled combine sales fell 3.2 percent.
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Audio: Curt Blades
