Year-to-date sales of tractors were down 0.3 per cent compared to 2024, while combine sales were up 1.6 per cent.

Total four-wheel drive tractors sales fell by 22.5 per cent. Total two-wheel drive tractor sales rose by 0.8 per cent.

In November, sales of two-wheel drive tractors under 40 horsepower were down 10.2 per cent compared to November of 2024 while sales of tractors with more than 100 horsepower were down 18.6 per cent. Sales of tractors with between 40 and 100 horsepower were up 11.8 per cent compared to the same month last year.

Four-wheel drive tractor sales fell by 50.6 per cent compared to last November. Combine sales were up 25.6 per cent.

Canadian equipment sales fared better than U.S. sales. At the end of November, year-to-date sales of all tractors were down 9.7 per cent in the U.S. Combine sales were down 38.3 per cent.

Downward trend continues

Overall, farm equipment sales in both countries have been trending down in recent years.

In late 2023, Farm Credit Canada warned that the year’s robust sales were unlikely to continue. The farm lender said sales had been strong thanks to the resolution of pandemic-era supply chain issues and strong farm cash receipts. However, drought in Western Canada and softening commodity prices were likely to take their toll.

Sales declined in 2024 as predicted, and in November 2024, FCC again predicted a slump in 2025 as farmers faced low commodity prices and high equipment costs.

Tariff impacts

This was before U.S. President Donald Trump took office and announced sweeping tariffs — including on the imported steel and aluminum needed to build machinery.

In late November, farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Co said it expected tariff impacts on the company to come in around US$600 million (C$826.1 million). It predicted a pre-tax tariff hit of around US$1.2 billion (C$1.65 billion) in 2026.

Low crop prices and high production costs were prompting American farmers to put off purchases or opt for used equipment. Deere has considered production shifts, higher prices and widening its portfolio to used equipment.

CFRA Research analyst Jonathan Sakraida said he does not expect Deere to recover until fiscal 2027, adding that the company struggled to offset tariff impacts.

—With files from Reuters

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Farmers weren’t feeling it this past winter.

Canadian producers bought only 21 new combines in January. That’s down 83 per cent from January of 2024, when farmers purchased 123 self-propelled combines, says a sales report from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM).

American sales data is similar. In January 2024, U.S. farmers bought 460 combines. This January, they only purchased 97.

In more hopeful news, Canadian sales of 4WD farm tractors climbed in January, going from 49 in January 2024 to 59 tractors this year.

Looking at the bigger picture, sales of farm tractors and combines have declined over the last year in North America. That trend may continue in 2025, the AEM said during a presentation at the Commodity Classic farm show March 3.

“AEM data show 2024 shipments of LHP and HHP (low and high HP) equipment have dropped year over year,” says an AEM summary of 2024.

Sales of low HP tractors have seen the steepest decline over the last couple of years. Shipments of higher horsepower tractors have also contracted, but not as much:

• As of December 2024, sales of LHP tractors were down 24 per cent year over year and 13 per cent below the five year average in the United States.
• For HHP, 2024 sales were similar to the five year average and 17 percent below year over year in the U.S.
• “That (high HP) market has been pretty stable over the last few years,” said Curt Blades, AEM senior vice-president of industry sectors.

“In 2023, we were trending above that line (the five year average)…. (But) in 2024, we were seeing that deceleration of that high HP tractor sales.”

The sales figures for combines followed a similar pattern.

Blades ended the AEM presentation with some key takeaway messages. Sluggish demand for ag equipment will likely persist in 2025 due to weaker grain prices, questions around biofuel policies and trade issues.

“In the ag market right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said.

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According to a recent news release from Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation, higher combine prices do not yet appear to have affected their sales in Canada. Increased market demand has driven higher sales each year since 2020. However, it noted, recent data suggests that combine sales, while strong on a year-to-date basis, tell a different story when measured year-over-year.

Good crop prices and record-high farm income may have previously buffered the effect of growing combine prices on buyer behaviour, the province said. That gravy train has since hit the brakes.

“Surprisingly, recent data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers show combine sales in Canada up 5.7 per cent year-to-date in July, while U.S. sales are down nearly 18 per cent year-to-date,” read the release.

“Sales in Canada for the month of July 2024, however, are nearly 28 per cent lower compared to July 2023. This may indicate tougher market conditions ahead.”

The release also noted the technology-rich nature of newer combines, which may be playing into consumer demand.

“The level of technology has increased dramatically and newer machines are equipped with GPS, computer sensors and a range of automatic features,” it noted.

Inflation, unsurprisingly, is also playing a major role. Although the price of a combine has increased in real terms, general inflation has also “contributed substantially” to increasing sticker prices, said the department.

The release also referenced the effect of the exchange rate between Canada and the U.S. As of Aug. 29, the Canadian dollar is worth 74 cents of a U.S. dollar, according to Google Finance.

“Many combines sold in Canada are manufactured in the U.S., and so the exchange rate has an effect on prices as well,” the release noted. “Combine prices seem to be more suppressed when the Canadian dollar is strong vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar, such as the period from 2010 to 2012, than when the Canadian dollar is weak.”

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Day two of the NFMS saw Massey Ferguson debut its 500R sprayer to attendees, and New Holland was eager to show how its latest collaboration helps guide all of your harvested grains into a grain cart.

Heath Kehnemund, marketing product specialist with Massey Ferguson, says the company’s 500R sprayer is designed for ease of operation and requires less maintenance.

“One of the things that we do differently than a lot of our competitors on the market is we have a LiquidLogic system…” said Kehnemund, “at the end of the day if you get blown out or rained out we can actually bring that product back to the tank to be able to go out and spray the next day.”

To help keep problem areas to a minimum, greaseless bushings are standard on the 500R and the cab interior takes a common look-and-feel approach for operators.

“It’s a common cab across a lot of our platforms,” said Kehnemund, “A guy can go from one machine to another and be very comfortable.”

Automation ‘Raven’ swoops in

A second new announcement at the show for New Holland was its collaboration with Raven Industries for Raven Cart Automation.

The new automated system reduces operator error during the handoff of grain between a combine operator and a tractor operator during harvest.

“With the system set up, you have reduced chances of impact, reduced chances of grain spillage, reduced chances of operator error as a whole” said Nick Mortensen, technology marketing manager for New Holland.

Raven Cart Automation works via local radio frequency which provides no delay in connection between the combine and a tractor. The system also allows combine operators to call up to six grain carts at a time in order to keep things moving smoothly in the field.

Want to hear more? Watch for upcoming videos of the Massey Ferguson 500R sprayer and the New Holland Raven Cart Automation system coming soon to AgDealerTV.

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Two well-known machinery brands took this opportunity to pull back the curtain and showcase their latest offerings in the combine market.

After turning heads at the Agritechnica show in Germany last November, New Holland’s CR11 combine began its North American tour on opening day of the annual show in Louisville, Kentucky.

New Holland’s C11 combine sports a brand new Cursor 16 engine and sees a horsepower output of 775, an increase of 75 horsepower compared with its C10 brother.

“This combine is built on the strong legacy of New Holland twin-rotor combines,” said Curtis Hillen, combine marketing manager for New Holland. “But this sets a new benchmark in the industry in terms of combine performance.”

Not to be outdone – and also weighing in at 775 horsepower – was Case IH’s new AF11 combine parked on the other side of the Exposition Center hall.

Leo Bose, harvest marketing manager with Case IH, says there are three areas the company has focused in on with its latest and largest combine.

“There’s really three areas that we focus in on,” said Bose. “Not only capacity, but the technology and the run time that really our customers are requesting for the size of machine we see behind us today.”

Want to learn more? Watch for upcoming videos of both of these combines on AgDealerTV coming soon to a screen near you.

Now in its 58th year, the National Farm Machinery Show is the largest indoor trade show in the United States.

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Agritechnica is the world’s largest agriculture machinery show, drawing more than 400,000 people from around the world to Hannover, Germany. Glacier FarmMedia Senior Technology Editor John Greig was there and summarized the major product launches and some of the ag-tech industry trends he observed.

– John Greig is a senior editor with Glacier FarmMedia. Watch for much more detail on these and many more stories and videos from Agritechnica in our Glacier FarmMedia newspapers and websites.

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I also happened upon the Canada pavilion, packed with companies familiar to many of us, including Honey Bee, Mankato, Schulte and Bushel Plus.

The companies say that there’s value in companies from Canada banding together to create more of a splash than they could individually for show attendees from around the world.

There are also some Canadian agriculture companies that are growing quickly.

At Bushel Plus, founder and CEO Marcel Kringe says that his company has grown to 30 employees, as the business diversifies from technology to test harvest loss out the back of the combine, to buying Canadian company Mad Concaves, to training farmers all over the world, from Europe, to Canada, to the United States, to Australia on how to maintain and set their combine for greater productivity.

Not far from the Canada pavilion is another company with a Canadian connection – Vaderstad, which took over Seed Hawk, which manufactures in Langbank, Sask. Vaderstad launched a new seeder at Agritechnica, the Seed Hawk 600-900C.

Chris Bettschen, a Canadian from Saskatchewan, who manages Australia and New Zealand for Vaderstad, says the new seeder will be manufactured at Vaderstad’s  plant in Sweden, but will have components from the Canadian plant. This seeder will have a wider appeal around the world, including in other parts of Canada, than Seed Hawk drills did due to its slimmer available width and new Vaderstad electronics. However, it retains some of the Seed Hawk look – and its well-known openers.

Lots of green

John Deere has one of the largest displays and is organized in a new way, the focus on two production systems in agriculture – one for small grains – think tractors and tillage, planters, fertilizer spreaders, then sprayers and combines. On the other side of the display is livestock equipment.

My tour of John Deere’s display included updates to combine systems, including slope compensation, new belts for draper heads that catch more small-seeded grains and oilseeds, a review of the company’s autonomy plans and a close-up look at its 8R tractor with its E-IVT transmission that produces electricity, which then drives power needs of implements.

John Deere often commands the spotlight with new releases, but that’s not the case this year at Agritechnica.

– John Greig is a senior editor with Glacier FarmMedia. Watch for much more detail on these and many more stories and videos from Agritechnica in our Glacier FarmMedia newspapers and websites.

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The show is huge – 27 buildings of equipment. To give you an idea, most of the buildings are the size of the AgriPlex at Western Fair in London, Ont.

This is where much of the new crop farm technology is showcased first – often as a concept or prototype.

I’ve seen hybrid, electric and methane-powered tractors, but one of the biggest releases of the week an even-bigger capacity combine from New Holland, the CR11 (photo at top).

The engineering of the CR11 won the gold medal in the Agritechnica innovation competition, scoring first out of 218 entries from around the world. New Holland believes that the new CR11 will break the world grain harvesting speed record set by its CR 10.90 combine.

The CR11 adds more horsepower, rising to 775 hp, more threshing, bin holding and unloading capacity.

What impressed the Agritechnica jury is that the company did it without increasing weight and The combine has already been in the field, tested in Western Canada. As Geert Nerinckx, global product manager for CR series combines told me, the New Holland CR11 needs Western Canada and Western Canada needs the CR11.

Watch soon for my upcoming story and video on the new CR11.

I also got to see the mind-bending Nexat in person today. The Nexat machine is a German-designed power unit that hooks into implements, so the machine can do pretty much all functions of crop production, including tillage, planting, fertilizing, spraying and harvesting all while reducing compaction by following dedicated tram lines.

The size of the Nexat is something else. Between two drive engines, it is powered by 1,050 horsepower. The engines drive the wheels electronically, meaning the system is set up for future options, like hydrogen power cells.

– John Greig is a senior editor with Glacier FarmMedia. Watch for much more detail on these and many more stories and videos from Agritechnica in our Glacier FarmMedia newspapers and websites.

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It’s an idea that Scherman says arose from the same philosophy as the ScherGain Solutions System he previously co-founded with his father. That system involves the use of a drop pan to better gauge how many bushels per acre are lost behind the combine.

Combinesettings.com is a web-based platform and app in which farmers create a profile, add their combine and settings to their profile and then receive and provide feedback with farmers across the world.

“Peer-to-peer isn’t a new thing, but it’s now the old thing that’s now on the internet,” Scherman said.

“You have your own combine settings, so when you log in, you post that you have a John Deere 9660 or whatever,” said Madden. “Here’s all my settings, my concave, fan speed, et cetera. Then people can comment on it, say, ‘Oh, have you tried this concave? Have you done this?'”

Described as a Reddit-type web forum, the site allows comments and questions under certain topics, and uses an up- or down-voting system to show which advice has merit.

The website launched earlier in July, with the app released Wednesday. Madden and Sherman said the traffic coming through their booth at Ag in Motion has been a welcome surprise.

“It’s been live for a while, and we’ve been slowly launching it to some farmers that we know asking for feedback,” said Madden.

“I felt bad for the development team. We were chatting with people and they’ll say, ‘Does it do this?’ and we’re like, ‘Yep,’ then go to the trailer and email the guys that we need to do this.”

AG IN MOTION VIDEO: Ag innovation winners unveiled

On Tuesday, the product won the Ag in Motion Innovations Award for Business Solutions at this year’s event, which came as a surprise to Scherman and Madden.

“We didn’t expect it at all,” said Scherman. “We applied for it, went to it and was like, ‘What, we just won?'”

Winning the award certainly helped the brand garner some recognition, as it does for most innovations award winners.

“We had a lot of people stop by and they said, ‘oh, I saw a bunch of social media about it afterwards,’ or ‘I saw you guys won this award.’ So, it was a good little kick-start for us,” said Scherman.

“People have been really excited about it.”

Farmers weren’t the only interested parties to visit the booth — retailers and corporations across the combine industry came by as well.

“We’ve had companies that have come to us, after-market companies for combine products, say, ‘I want all my customers on your site,’ ” said Scherman.

“Some of those people have 200, 500 customers. We said on Tuesday we’re going to gather our thoughts and have a call because a lot has happened in the past few days.”

With the website only being up for a short time, they are hoping to take the feedback they’ve received, implement it in their site and take it to ag shows across the world to grab the global market while they can and find new ways to keep expanding and improving.

“It’s really professional, we’ve put a lot of money into development and that’s not slowing down anytime soon,” said Madden. “We’re making it global as quick as we can.”

The two are planning on attending trade shows in Australia, Germany, Ukraine and elsewhere in the next couple of years.

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Harvest weed seed control might not be a golden bullet to tackle glyphosate-, fluroxypyr- and dicamba-resistant weeds, but according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researcher Breanne Tidemann, it’s part of the range of solutions needed to stem the tide.

“You’re not going to spray your way out of this,” Tidemann said about herbicide resistance during her presentation at Ag in Motion.

“If you get a new product or new mode of action that works really well, everyone is going to adopt it, the selection pressure is going to go through the roof and we’re going to break that next tool, too. So, continuing to hope, cross our fingers, wishing and praying a new product is going to come out and save us is a little bit naïve, a little wishful thinking.”

However, the ability to mechanically separate weed seed at the point of harvest is part of the diversification solution that looks beyond just chemicals.

Development of harvest weed seed control started in the early 2000s in Australia before moving onto commercialization with the Harrington Seed Destructor trailer unit.

There are limitations to the implement, mainly that the weeds need to be either tall or short enough to fit in the header. However, once they do, the weed seeds are largely ground up into a flour-like material, doesn’t broadcast and can be an effective tool in not only limiting spread but getting to the core of the issue. As long as weeds are harvested, seed destructors have a more than 95 per cent rate of success.

Canadian research with the unit began in 2014, but since then, integrated harvest weed seed control implements for combines have been developed and are now commercially available.

While initial research is promising in demonstrating the implement will have significant impact on both weed control as well as limiting broadcast, weeds will likely be able to adapt even to mechanical attempts at tackling weeds.

“Weeds will adapt. Weeds are dirty little buggers that will find some way — they’ll mature more quickly, they’ll drop there seeds earlier, they’ll become more prostrate,” said Tidemann.

“We’ll see adaptations, I firmly believe that, particularly if we switch whole hog from only herbicides to only relying on this.”

She said it’s about redundancy, adding the solution is to use a range of techniques.

As far as where the technology goes next, Tidemann said the speed in which it’s already progressed is impressive and manufacturers of weed seed harvest control implements are continually improving the product.

“They are really listening to farmers,” she said.

“A farmer will say, ‘I had a problem with a metal bolt going through and it damaged my mill, I had to do a lot of repairs.’ The next thing you know, they’ve got a magnetic strip to catch metal pieces before they go through the mills.”

As development work continues, Tidemann said she hopes the technology is more widely adopted in Canada.

“My understanding from talking to colleagues (in Australia) is 80 to 90 per cent of their farmers are using some form of harvest weed control,” she said.

“Western Australia is showing it can be incorporated into a system and it can help and it can work.”

There is a cost, with units running in the $100,000 range, but Tidemann said it’s likely less than what farmers might think because it can be used on one combine that can tackle particularly weed patches rather than being required on every combine.

— Alex McCuaig reports for the Western Producer from Medicine Hat.

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