Agrievolution Alliance is a global umbrella organisation for the world’s agricultural machinery manufacturing and dealer associations.
As such, it is well placed to view trends and developments throughout the whole of the industry.
Each year it issues two confidential reports to its members; at the same time it also releases a few of the more noteworthy details to the public at large.
In its latest bulletin (from October), it is not greatly cheered by the present situation – noting that the “global business climate for agricultural machinery has deteriorated but continues at a good level”.
Little clarity
This mixed message is countered by the assertion that there is “still a majority of industry representatives expecting turnover increases in the next six months”. However, the overall picture is still something of a curate’s egg – good in parts.
Latin America and Russia are the two brightest regions, with members reporting a strong positive evaluation of farming profitability.
Turkey, on the other hand, is something of a disaster zone – as far as optimism is concerned. 100% of the respondents gave a negative evaluation of farm profitability; this was in addition to the country scoring very poorly when assessing the current business climate.
The industry there also gave the thumbs down to the government’s perceived support for agriculture. All the dealers noted that credit has become more difficult to obtain over the last three months.
Western Europe took the middle ground in most indices, except for that of growth expectations where it headed the field, closely followed by the USA. Japan and east Asia generally reflected this mood, although not to the same extent.
One general conclusion that can be drawn from the results is that countries with a larger farm size tended to believe themselves to be in a better position than those with a more fragmented agricultural industry.
This may help to explain the enthusiasm for manufacturers in the west to develop ever larger machines for export.
