According to figures released by the AEA, UK registrations of new agricultural tractors (over 50hp) in December 2017 reached 1,360 units - which equates to a +164.1% change compared with December 2016.

Stephen Howarth, Agricultural Economist at the AEA said of these figures, "This is well over double the number registered in the same month of 2016, mainly due to a large number of machines being pre-registered in advance of the introduction of new regulations on 1 January 2018.

"It is likely that this will lead to some suppression of the number of registrations in the early months of 2018."

The big rise in December brought the total number of tractors registered in 2017 to 12,033, 13% more than in 2016.

Stephen Howarth said of this, "This is only the second rise in the number of registrations in nine years and the first since 2011. Even without the additional pre-registrations, last year’s total would still have been higher than previous year, although the rate of increase would have been lower."