Tractor buyers hunt for grunt

Most were gearing up to retain their productivity in a labour-starved farming environment, with dealers citing competition with the mines as driving the trend.

As a rule of thumb, it seemed a 37 kilowatt (50 horsepower) increase was the order of the day as farmers tried to pull bigger gear with less machines to make up for the lack of staff.

"Despite the weather damage to last year’s crops the high yields still helped things (sales) along," said Case IH regional customer service manager for northern NSW and southern Queensland, Pete McCann.

"There’s also a change in the machinery configurations because of the lack of manpower with competition from the mines.

"My northern dealers have done very well - we’ve got a lot of forward order banks full, especially of the new models."

However, despite an increase in orders, he noticed some buyers sitting back and watching the direction of the world economy, a factor that was also making the machinery finance side of things tougher.

He said the finance situation was leading to more shopping around as well as others who were simply waiting for back-to-back good seasons.

"If (farmers) can get two good years in a row we’ll see a lot of machines turned over," he said.

"And especially with cotton as there’s a lot of irrigators that haven’t seen a crop for a while, but will this year."

As for the horsepower upgrades, Mr McCann said for example, if a grower had a Magnum 305, he was seeing them upgrade to a Magnum 340 - the largest front-wheel assist.

This demand for larger machines helped along a couple of "very solid" days at AgQuip for Mr McCann, who said the Tuesday was "by far the best first day we’ve had".

Also enjoying a good field day was the Kenten Machinery crew with sales manager, Michael Carter, who operates from Hexham and Scone, reporting better than expected confidence among buyers.

His team was kept busy with several orders and deposits on tractors, with a focus on the Deutz-Fahr range as buyers targeted fuel efficiency, technology upgrades and the ability to do jobs more efficiently, he said.

For this reason, he too witnessed a trend of buyers who were upgrading by 37kW on average - and this was also accompanied by increased size in implements.

"To save time people’s implements are getting bigger and they need more horsepower to run these implements," he said.

Mr Carter said the implement size increase at AgQuip had been particularly noticable where farmers were upgrading from six-foot slashers to 15- or 20-foot slashers.

"Instead of covering six foot, you’re covering 15 feet in one pass," he said.

"But you’re not using two-and-a-half times the amount of fuel."

In fact, it was implement sales where the upgrading in size was best expressed, with Mr Carter reporting the biggest sales in this division at AgQuip in four years.

Meanwhile, the older generation farmers were after "sound but simple" tractors that represented value for money, with purchases helped along by improved confidence in agriculture.

"(We’re) seeing more confidence in the industry because the weather patterns have changed and commodity prices have improved," he said.