Agricultural tractor sales across the pond are still sluggish, while in the UK they are on the up so far this year.
The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) of North America has published its latest sales data for 2023 which shows a 12.1% decline in tractor sales in March.
Compacts lose out
The tractor market in the US is quite different to that of Europe with the sub-40hp sector being by far the largest, with small family or part-time farms still playing a dominant role in agriculture.
Last month saw a 14.2% reduction in sales over March 2022 for these smaller machines, bringing the total down to 14,560 units sold.
This, in turn, affected the overall figures for the year-to-date with 31,288 units being sold so far, a 20% reduction, suggesting that the market has bottomed out and is starting to recover.
In the first two months of the year larger tractors of 100hp and above had fared well, showing an increase on 2022, but in March they saw a sudden drop of 6.1%, yet for the first quarter of the year total sales were still up on 2022 by 5%.
Sharp increase in 4WD
A sector which has done particularly well in sales so far this year is that of four wheel drive (4WD) tractors.
It is telling that this is considered a separate segment of the market rather than taken as the standard type as it is in Europe.
Last year, 4WD tractors accounted for just 1.1% of US tractor sales with a measly 3,469 units being sold altogether. This year, 898 sales have been recorded so far which is a 50% increase on 2022.
March alone saw a 106% increase, or 414 4WD tractors in total.
Unfortunately, the AEM does not supply a breakdown of the power brackets in the 4WD sales sector, although as 4WD was being adopted in Ireland and the UK, it was the higher powered models which got it first.
Should this be the case in the US, it could well mark the start of a trend away from the reliance upon 2WD tractors weighted down to maximise grip on the single-drive axle, and that, in turn, could be a reflection of a change in cropping patterns.
However, the number is still insignificant when compared with the total number of tractors sold, so we should not read too much read into the sudden interest in 4WD, although it remains an interesting development.
UK buoyant
It has been a good year for tractor sales in the UK with January showing a 28% increase in sales over 2022 and in March 12.5% more tractors were registered.
February bucked the trend with a decline of nearly 15, yet it is March which is always the busiest month, and with 2,223 units passing through the showroom doors, it more than made up for the previous month’s shortfall.
Overall, tractor sales are 10% up on this time last year despite the problems of supply, which had always tended to affect the higher hp models. The average power of a new UK tractor now stands at around 165-170hp.
European sales down in 2022
Over on this side of the Atlantic, CEMA published the results for total sales in Europe for 2022.
The organisation attempts to extract the sales of tractors from the number of vehicles registered as agricultural vehicles. This showed a decrease in sales of 8% compared to 2021 with 165,200 agricultural tractors being registered.
It must be noted however, that 2021 was a good year for sales, second only to 2017 over the previous six years and even after last year’s decrease, the total sold still remains above the average for the same period.
The reason stated for the decline is a bottleneck in supplies due to recent global disruptions.
However it is also noted that lead times have dropped back to an average of six months, which is an improvement but it still puts pressure on stock levels which remain below normal.
