We feature a news item today with quite a dramatic headline regarding the current state of ag machinery sales in the UK.
With the latest figures that the AEA have released of registrations of agricultural tractors during February 2025, it's accurate to state that the market has experienced its lowest numbers since the 90s. Admittedly it only just meets that time period benchmark as it was December 1999 when they were last as low as this, but it's still undeniably last century.
It seems fair to say that everyone knows that sales into the farming sector have been pretty dire for a while now, but I do feel this data from the Association is particularly stark and gives pause for thought.
Stephen Howarth, the AEA's agricultural economist, offers some potential for optimism, pointing out how the opening two months of the year are typically a quiet period for tractors. "Therefore," he says, "we will have a clearer idea of the trend for the year ahead once we've seen figures for March, which is usually the peak month of the year for registrations."
What is clear though, is just how extraordinarily tough it is right now for our agricultural machinery dealer readers to sell kit into farms.
Last week when myself and Service Dealer's owner Duncan Murray-Clarke were on our short road trip visiting a handful of dealers in northern England, the one true ag dealership we dropped in on was Ripon Farm Services. There we chatted to Phil Gregg who isn't one to mince his words and can always be relied upon to give it to you straight.
Phil told us just how hard wholegood sales into agriculture have been in recent times. "Customers just keep putting off purchases," he told us. "It can't continue like this forever, but there's just so much uncertainty in the market it makes things difficult. Farmers are quite simply strapped for cash."
We asked Phil why he thought the circumstances are so bad? It's complex with a multitude of factors of course, with Phil summing it up by saying, "Times are difficult in farming and it’s therefore difficult for us a business off the back of that. We service and look after the farming community and when they find it tough, we find it tough too."
Phil also told us just how surprised he has been with the speed of the downturn in wholegood sales to farmers. "The decline has been rapid," he confirmed.
When looking for positives in the situation, Phil admitted that he found it difficult to do so on the ag side of the business at the moment but, as reported last week, it's the professional turf care part of the Ripon set-up that's proving buoyant. They have a young, dynamic team there who are finding success in the commercial sector, with some recent high-profile wins.
Which begs the question, is it a diversity of machinery offerings that will prove to be the saving grace for dealers this year?
Looking beyond ag, when we visited Major Owen last week, they cited their mix of domestic, commercial and construction machinery as being vital for their company's health. If one area slips, the others should hopefully be there to pick up the slack, is how they look at it.
One presumes this is a view held by increasing numbers of dealers. In years gone by, one feels the delineation between domestic, commercial and agricultural machinery dealers was a lot more pronounced. Now those lines appear to be blurred - but you tell me?
Is solely serving just one area of the market a strategy that is falling out of favour? Do dealers need to be specialists across multiple machinery disciplines nowadays in order to navigate the seasons?
Please let us know your thoughts on this in the comments below.
