Tractor sales down but combines are up in Canada and US

Jul 13, 2022

Monthly report from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers shows Canadian and US sales of all types of tractors down slightly in June compared to 2021 numbers, though not in every size category—but combine sales show nice push upwards.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Image via the Association of Equipment Manufacturers

According to the June 2022 report issued by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), tractor sales were down overall, but not for every tractor category, while combines sales made huge gains in both the US and Canada.

So, while it appears on the surface as a good-news-bad-news scenario, it’s not. It was mostly the big-ticket items—especially in Canada—that were being purchased.

Let’s see if we can provide a better understanding of what the AEM report for June 2022 means.

First, note that the AEM has smartly separated tractors into two specific categories: 2WD and 4WD, with three subsets for the 2WD vehicles. For 2WD tractors, as denoted by horsepower, we have: < 40 HP (less than); 40 < 100 HP; and 100+ HP. Combines… are designated as Self Prop Combines.

CANADA
If we look at total sales in June 2022 for farm tractors (regardless of type or size) Canadian sales were down by 5.0 percent when compared to the June of 2021. Combines, however, were up by 35.1 percent.

Let’s examine.

For the 2WD farm tractor sector, for tractors < 40 HP, sales dropped by 7.0 percent with 2,140 in June 2022, compared with 2,302 in 2021.

For those at 40 < 100 HP, sales were in the positive with 1.8 percent growth in June 2022 with 564 sales compared to 554 units sold in June of 2021.

For the 100+ HP sector, there was a drop of 11.1 percent in June 2022 sales, with 305 units sold, compared to 343 sold in Junee of 2021.

If we do the math (and AEM did that for us), overall in the 2WD farm tractor segment, it’s a drop of 5.9 percent, with 3,009 units sold in the month of June 2022, compared to 3,199 sold in June of 2021.

But we did say that the bigger ticket items did well. For the 4WD sector of farm tractors, there was a 46.4 percent increase, with 82 units sold in June of 2022, compared to just 56 sold in June of 2021.

Combines… yeah… June of 2022 saw 154 units sold, compared to 114 sold in June of 2021, an increase of 35.1 percent.

Year-to-Date numbers across the board, however, show a decrease in 2022 compared to 2021, with a single exception.

For 2WD < 40HP farm tractors, year-to-date numbers in 2022 show a total of 9,976 sales compare to 11,087 sold in 2021—a decrease of 10 percent.

For 40 < 100 HP farm tractors, there have been 2,871 units sold so far in 2022, compared with 2,931 in 2021—a drop of 1.8 percent.

The lone bright spot overall, is in the 100+ HP segment, with 1,741 units sold in 2021 so far, compared to 1,710 sold in 2021—a positive showing, albeit a small one, of 1.8 percent.

Overall, 2WD tractors have shown a decrease of 7.2 percent in 2022 compared to January-February of 2021.

For 4WD farm tractors, 2022 numbers are down quite a bit—28.0 percent, with only 349 sales so far in 2022 compared to 485 units sold in 2021.

The combine farm tractor sales (2WD + 4WD) are down by 7.9 percent in 2022, with 14,937 units sold so far this year, compared with 16,213 units sold as of June 2021.

Combines sales are also down overall for 2022, with 481 units sold, compared to 569 sold in 2022—a drop of 15.5 percent. But hey, at least sales for June 2022 were showing an upward swing, right?

UNITED STATES
Looking at total farm tractors (2WD + 4WD) in the US for the month of June 2022, there were 27,426 units sold (down from May 2022 when 27,880 units were sold, and down from April 2022 when 31,587 units were sold).

In June of 2021, there were 29,892 total farm tractors sold, which means that our 2022 numbers show a decrease of 8.2 percent.

For the < 40 HP farm tractor segment, there were 18,466 units sold in June of 2022, compared to 20,572 sold in 2021—a decrease of 10.2 percent.

For the 40 < 100 HP segment, 6,721 tractors were sold, compared against 7,246 sold in June of 2021—again a drop in sales, this one by 7.2 percent.

We did mention higher ticket sales as doing well, with the 100+ HP farm tractors having 1,981 sales in June of 2022, compared against just 1,808 sales in June of 2021—an increase of 9.6 percent. Yay!

Overall, the 2WD farm tractor market sagged by 8.3 percent, with combined 2WD sales in June of 2022 at 27,168, compared to the 29,626 units sold in June of 2021.

For 4WD farm tractors, sales dipped slightly in June of 2022, with 258 units sold in June 2022, compared against 266 units sold in June of 2021, a drop of 3.0 percent.

Good news for combines—though percentage-wise not as robust as that shown for Canada—there were 629 units sold in June of 2022, compared with 502 sales in June of 2021—that’s an impressive increase of 25.3 percent.

When we look at the year-to-date information for 2022 against 2021 numbers, sales are down across the board.

Total farm tractors (2WD + 4WD) are down 13.4 percent with 144,303 units sold so far in 2022, compared with 166,551 units sold January through June of 2021—a decrease of 13. 4 percent.

For 2WD farm tractors in the <40 HP segment, year-to-date data shows a drop of 15.8 percent, with 99,597 units sold as of June 2022, compared against 118,289 sold by June of 2021.

For the 40 < 100 HP 2WD farm tractor segment, there were 32,138 units sold as of June 2022, compared to 36,585 sold as of June 2021—a decrease of 12.2 percent.

The bright spot, again, is in the 100+ HP segment, with 2022’s year-to-date sales showing a 10.3 percent increase based on 11,282 units sold, overshadowing the 10,231 units sold as of June 2021.

The 2WD farm tractor sales market is down overall by 13.4 percent: Year-to-date 2022 at 143,017 units, compared to 2021 numbers of 165,105 units sold.

In the 4WD farm tractor segment, it’s an 11.1 percent drop with 1,286 units sold as of June 2021, compared to 1,446 sold in 2021.

Overall, the year-to-date numbers for both 2WD and 4WD farm tractor sales are down by 13.4 percent, with 144,303 units sold as of June 2022, and 166,551 sold as of June 2021.

The June 2022 sales bump in combines still shows a year-to-date drop of 5.5 percent when compared against 2021.

As of June of 2022, there have been 2,150 sales of combines, compared to 2,275 such sales as of June 2021.

The AEM is the leading organization in North America advancing construction and agriculture equipment manufacturers and their value chain partners in the global marketplace. More information available at www.aem.org.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”