For the last 3 years, the trend lines for tractor sales all followed the same basic pattern. So far, for 2009, that's been true, with one major exception: The line looks the same, only it's a ways lower on the chart.

Tractor sales have dropped this year, a sign, some say, of the tough economic times. According to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), year-to-date sales for 2009 are around a quarter lower than they were a year ago. For the month of May, a total of 17,782 tractors have been sold, AEM data shows, compared to 24,068 at the same time a year ago. That's a 26.1% sales decline. Those numbers contribute to a 66,676 figure for total tractor sales for the year so far, down 22.6% from last year's 86,091 figure at this point.

But, a look at combine sales paints a totally different picture. In May, farmers bought 739 combines nationwide, compared to 513 for the same month a year ago. That's an almost 44% increase. And, year-to-date, 2,928 combines have sold compared to 2,206 by this time a year ago.

The economic downturn has clearly reached into the farm machinery market, but that doesn't mean it's standing between you and new iron, farmers say. While it may seem too heavy a lift to bring new equipment onto your farm, it all depends on how you do it, says Agriculture Online Machinery Talk member rrustydawg.

"I think the key is to not trade up in one giant step," he says. "$100K to $150K will buy some excellent used iron, and you can use it for 3 or 4 years and probably only drop the resale/trade-in value by 25%. Then, if you want to get some newer paint, you just bump up again.

"Personally, I love low-hour used iron. Great value as long as you are willing to do the extra maintenance."
Others say the economic downturn that's thought to be the culprit of lower sales actually could entice more sales. It's all about how you write off equipment depreciation, says Machinery Talk member Pupdaddy.

"In this economic environment, we have what may be possibly the best time to buy new farm equipment that we've ever experienced. If you buy something, you can depreciate virtually all of it against your income in the first year," he says. "On top of the Section 179 deduction that you can take this year on either new or used is another 50% reduction against your income if the machinery is new.
"I'd run a pencil over those figures this year, and I'm thinking I might be buying a few necessary long-term usage items even if I have to finance them."
And, if that latter point becomes a reality for you, talk to your dealer, adds another Machinery Talk member. They may be just as hungry to sell the machinery as you are to buy it right now.

Every day, whether on the phone in the office, responding to e-mails, or when I'm out on the road covering machinery auctions around the country, folks ask me this same question. Inquiring minds want to know.
My answer has been the same the last 4 years, "things are selling very well, prices are up." But just my saying it never does it justice. I always want to show folks exactly what I'm talking about, that over the last four years used farm equipment values are indeed up. I like to provide hard proof and let the sale price data tell the tale.

So I'm going to do this today. I'm going to show you hard evidence of how used equipment values have gone up. Ok, now what examples should I show you? Hmm, we track sale price data on over 70 different categories of farm equipment, so lots of different directions I go here. AUGER values have been zooming higher. Same with GRAIN CARTS and GRAIN TRAILERS for sure. With the late, wet harvest last year values on used tillage items like DISKS and DISK CHISELS have been going through the roof.
But I think I'll stick to TRACTORS today, the universal category most everyone is interested in. Let's narrow it down and just focus on tractors in the 150 horsepower range. What I'll do is show you auction sale prices from now vs. five years ago, back in the year 2005.
The comparison just might knock your socks off.

Let's start with JD 7810s. Deere made 7810s from 1997-2003, so we're talking 7-13 year old tractors as we sit here today. First I'll show you what the nicest 7810s were selling for at auction back in 2005. Here you go:

See how the highest auction sale price on a JD 7810 tractor back in 2005 was $78,000? Now look closer. See the last 7810 in the table above? Yes it sold for $78,000, but it was a 2003 model making it only two years old at the time, had mechanical front-wheel drive and sold with a JD 741 loader.

Now compare that to the 2000 model 7810, 2-wheel drive, with 840 hours, no loader, sold last month on a sale in east-central Iowa for $76,000. So this 7810 had no mechanical front-wheel drive, no loader and was 10 years old, yet sold for almost the same money.
See what I'm talking about now when I say used equipment values are up?
Here's more proof, a list of the nicest JD 7810s sold at auction the last couple years:

Look at all those sale prices I've highlighted, all at or above what the nicest JD 7810s were selling for at auction back in 2005. Older, but selling for more money. Proof of what I'm talking about when I say used values have been going up.

Let's move on to other older model Deere tractors in this 150 horsepower range. JD 7800s were made from 1993-96. Let's do the same then vs. now comparison:

JD 4455s? Wow. Back in 2005 the highest auction sale price I saw all year on a 4455 was $49,000. Last Saturday (March 20th) on a consignment sale in southeast Iowa, I shot video of a 1991 model 4455 mechanical front-wheel drive with 6,450 hours, very nice but no spring chicken, selling for $46,000.

You may recall the 4455 I wrote about last October? No, don't remember? I'll refresh your memory. A 1991 4455 mechanical front-wheel drive with 1,423 hours (1 owner, immaculate condition) sold with a JD 280 loader for $94,500. Yep, $94,500. There was also the 1991 4455 with 5,456 hours, mechanical front-wheel drive sold in March 2009 on a sale in east-central North Dakota for $69,000.

More proof, used values have been going up.
Same with red tractors in this 150 horsepower range. Case IH made 7120s from 1987-83. The highest auction price I saw on Case IH 7120s back in 2005? $44,500 for the 1988 7120, mechanical front, with 1,967 1-owner hours, sold in east-central Illinois. Now compare to a few of the nicest 7120s I've seen sold the last couple years:

Same trend, older but worth more.
Exactly the same thing I see with Case IH 7220s:

I guess the lesson here is that used farm equipment values aren't static, they fluctuate up and down. Yes, they can go down friends. I've seen it happen before. Used values were way up back in 1996 and 1997, then fell pretty hard from 1998 through 2001.
Will they fall again after the run up here the last couple years?

Factors working hard against a drop in the value of good condition used equipment currently are the ever rising price of new equipment, controlled production of new equipment and also the scarcity of machinery auctions.

US Auctions Australian Auctions Austrian Auctions Belgian Auctions Canadian Auctions French Auctions German Auctions Indian Auctions Irish Auctions Italian Auctions Dutch Auctions Polish Auctions Spanish Auctions Swiss Auctions UK Auctions

Best Match Time: ending soonest Time: newly listed Price: lowest first Price: highest first Price + Shipping: lowest first Price + Shipping: highest first

No items matching your keywords were found.

“As always, exhibitors will be showing a variety of products and services of interest to farm owners and operators,” says Rob Juneau, WPS Farm Show manager. “This includes tractors and field machinery and parts; feed, livestock and manure-handling equipment; ventilation systems; lighting; milking and barn equipment and supplies; financial, insurance and real estate services; and seed, feed and fertilizer.”

Juneau adds that the show is “going green” this year by purchasing its electricity through WPS’s NatureWise program. NatureWise offers renewable energy from wind and biomass resources in northeast Wisconsin.
Admission to the farm show is free, and parking is $3 per vehicle. Gates are open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday.

“The show comes at the time of year when farmers are anticipating the upcoming planting and haying seasons,” Juneau notes. “That’s why this event has become known as a ‘buying’ show because they’re ready to invest in new equipment and try new methods.”
Among the highlights of this year’s show are the following:
• over 430 vendors throughout the EAA grounds
• more than 800 indoor and outdoor booths covering the 10-acre site
• free motorized scooters for attendees who need mobility assistance
• seminars on energy efficiency, sand separation, ventilation, building integrated photovaltaics
• silent auctions to benefit the Wisconsin FFA Foundation each day
• routine medical screenings provided by University of Wisconsin-
• Oshkosh Health on Tuesday and Thursday only: blood pressure screenings are free, blood sugar screenings cost $5, cholesterol tests cost $10
• centrally located food tent offering a wide selection of food from nonprofit commodity groups
• on-site agricultural consultants from Wisconsin Public Service to answer energy management questions.

How to get to the show
Directions from north of Oshkosh: Take Hwy. 41 south to Ripon Road/Hwy. 44 East (Exit 116). Turn left onto Ripon Road/Hwy. 44 East. Turn right onto Knapp Street. Bear right onto Poberezny Road. Turn left onto Waukau Avenue.
Directions from south of Oshkosh: Take Hwy. 41 north to Ripon Road/Hwy. 44 East (Exit 116). Turn right onto Ripon Road/Hwy. 44 East. Turn right onto Knapp Street. Bear right onto Poberezny Road. Turn left onto Waukau Avenue.
Alternate directions from south of Oshkosh: Take Hwy. 41 north to Hwy. 26/County Road N East (Exit 113). Turn right onto Hwy. 26. Turn left onto Poberezny Road. Turn right onto Waukau Avenue.

Politicians from rural states often extol the virtues of the family farm.
But what is it? And what can be done to save what sometimes seems like another endangered species?

Chuck Hassebrook, the executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs laid out a five-step plan for doing both when he delivered a keynote speech Friday at the MOSES conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

MOSES, or Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service, drew some 2,800 farmers and supporters of organic agriculture to its annual meeting to hear Hassebrook and attend 60 workshops on February 25 through February 27.
Hassebrook, who grew up on a hog and grain farm near Platte Center, Nebraska, said his nonprofit organization is based in Lyons, Nebraska, a town of 900.

"We don't just talk about rural issues. We live these issues," he said.
Hassebrook, who is also in his second elected term as a member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, said that in spite of technology that has brought many benefits to agricultural production, there is a sense of unease in rural America about declining rural population as farms grow ever larger.

Numerous studies by sociologists have shown that small towns surrounded by only a few very large farms tend to have a wealthy elite and no middle class.

"That, my friends, is not progress. It's social decay," Hassebrook said.
Hassebrook mentioned the public's support for locally grown food, more access to nature and "a yearning for greater authenticity and genuineness in America." All of these trends have contributed to the growth in demand for the organic foods grown by some in the MOSES audience. Yet, he said, he s not certain how much public sentiment alone will do to keep family farms in business.
"At the end of the day, it is up to us to take responsibility for our own destiny and to take control of our future," he said.
Hassebrook offered 5 ways to do that:

1. "We need to protect our authenticity," he said. Consumers may not know when they pay double the normal price for natural beef that it comes from a 50,000-head feedlot, he said. And he praised the work of activists who ve pressured USDA to enforce organic standards that require dairy cows to have access to pasture. Besides organic standards, "I think we need to build a family farm standard," he said. A family farm ought to mean that one that owns the means of production, makes management decisions and provides most of the labor, he said.

2. "We need to be entrepreneurial," he said, adding that small towns aren't going to be saved by recruiting large companies to locate there. Economic development in rural America has to be home-grown. And the organic and sustainable agriculture community needs good business models. "There's a lot of failures," he said, but two success stories are Organic Valley, the farmer-owned dairy foods co-op based in La Farge, Wisconsin, and Niman Ranch Pork, managed out of Thornton, Iowa.

3. "We all need to contribute to our community. Our farms have a symbiotic relationship to our community," he said. In Lyons, Nebraska, Hassebrook has worked to get buildings on its main street in the National Register of Historic Places, for example.

4. "We need to protect access to good germplasm," Hassebrook said. That means more than organic farmers having access to elite seed varieties that aren't genetically mondified, he said. It means more competition in the seed industry for conventional farmers. He said that he opposed the University of Nebraska's licensing of dicamba-resistant soybeans to Monsanto but was unable to stop it.

5. The bias toward large farms in federal farm policy needs to be reversed, he said. "We need to simply stop subsidizing the megafarms that are driving [family farms] out of business," he said. The Obama administration could have done that with a tighter USDA standard that requires active management of a farm to qualify for commodity program payments.
"It's very disappointing that the Obama administration that made this the centerpiece of farm policy in Iowa (before Iowa's presidential caucuses), they ve abandoned that," Hassebrook said.

Hassebrook said that the Center for Rural Affairs has begun a web-based campaign to urge the President and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to keep that campaign promise to have tougher farm program payment limits. Click here for more information.

Based on the same field-proven chassis as the premium KIOTI line, the new DS4110 (41 horsepower; tractor only with ag tires has a MSRP of $17,750) and DS4510 (45 horsepower; tractor only, with ag tires has a MSRP of $18,650) both feature the same powerful yet fuel-efficient and well-proven Daedong Diesel engine with the injection pump tweaked for different power levels. Both tractors include standard features like a rear 540 rpm PTO (33.4 PTO horsepower DS4110 and 37.6 PTO horsepower DS4510) and a constant mesh shuttle transmission with eight forward and eight reverse gears. Both tractors are also equipped with four-wheel drive, power steering, wet disc brakes, and rear differential lock, a comfortable and adjustable seat, foldable ROPS, seat belt and a choice of Ag,

Turf or Industrial tires. Both also come with KIOTI's four-year, full fleet warranty.
"We have positioned this line between the so-called economy tractors offered by other OEMs and our premium line, which is highly regarded in this marketplace,” says Ron Parrish, Marketing Development Manager at KIOTI. “We believe we have an extremely competitive product here at an extremely competitive price point.”

US Auctions Australian Auctions Austrian Auctions Belgian Auctions Canadian Auctions French Auctions German Auctions Indian Auctions Irish Auctions Italian Auctions Dutch Auctions Polish Auctions Spanish Auctions Swiss Auctions UK Auctions

Best Match Time: ending soonest Time: newly listed Price: lowest first Price: highest first Price + Shipping: lowest first Price + Shipping: highest first

Brand new Lenar Tractor model JL254 II 7 Hours 4 x 4

US $8,000.00

24d 23h 15m

2006 Kioti CK25 with 95hrs

US $13,000.00

16d 19h 28m

Massey Ferguson 1010 DIESEL 4WD tractor mower blade

US $3,900.00

3d 9h 53m

Kioti Compact Utility Tractor

0 Bid

US $9,995.00

1d 6h 42m

Kioti CK 20 tractor with Kioti Loader and Kioti Backhoe

1 Bid

US $7,000.00

3d 6h 29m

Powered by phpBay Pro

While some may say the recession is over, jobs are still scarce and many still feel the pinch. If you’re looking for extra income, an interesting hobby or a new business, why not try farming? The New Jersey Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-NJ) can help. They are holding two new classes this month on how to start up or expand agricultural businesses.
“Farming” often brings to mind images of fields spreading out far and wide, cavernous barns full of cows, and tractors with giant tires. But farming is actually quite diverse. Even small properties can support a surprising array of agricultural products.

As NOFA-NJ points out, there are niche markets for everything from goat cheese to fresh flowers and heirloom tomatoes. Maybe your favorite restaurant is importing specialty herbs that YOU could raise and sell. Or maybe your town has a farmers market where you could set up a booth on weekends.

And don’t forget that organic products grown close to home are increasingly popular in the Garden State. Health-conscious consumers are seeking out foods grown without pesticides or fertilizers, and many New Jersey residents are looking to buy local.
“Exploring The Small Farm Dream” is NOFA-NJ’s four-week class designed to help answer the question, “Is starting an agricultural business right for me?” If you have ever thought about using your green thumb to earn some greenbacks, this course may be the perfect starting point. You will learn about small-scale farming opportunities, how to assess personal and financial resources, conduct market research and develop a business plan.

If the seeds of an agricultural business have already been planted in your mind, check out NOFA-NJ’s more comprehensive course titled, “Tilling the Soil of Opportunity.” This course is geared toward farmers looking for innovative ideas and enhanced marketing opportunities. Topics include equipment, legal issues, management and communication, risk management, marketing, budgeting and accounting, financing, succession planning, and how to evaluate resources, among others.

Both classes begin in mid-February and will be held at Duke Farms in Hillsborough.

You can register for either course by calling (908) 722-3700 any day between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. For more information contact NOFA-NJ at (908) 371-1111 or download a brochure under the ‘Events’ link at www.nofanj.org.

Many small farmers are moving toward a more environmentally conscious model of agriculture. For the small farmer, this move comes with economic risks. By purchasing, fixing and maintaining used farm tractors, the farmer can mitigate his economic risk while creating a new way of sustainable agriculture on his own farm.

Most small family farmers are self-taught experts in many fields. They have to be. For them, maintaining and fixing their own equipment is imperative to their economic survival. Therefore, most used farm tractors are in good shape or in easily fixable shape. As their needs change, farmers frequently sell their used equipment. Finding these tractors and other equipment is easy. Most farm bureaus, online farm community sites, farm cooperative publications and old-fashioned word-of-mouth are all good places to start when looking for previously owned tractors.

By maintaining their used farm tractors, farmers are keeping this equipment from entering the junkyard. Because equipment is older, it is far more affordable for the small farmer who has decided to make the economic and philosophical change toward a more sustainable type of agriculture. Used farm tractors can serve as a solid economic incentive to the small farmer.

Obtaining used farm tractors can also be a learning experience for the entire farm family. Working on and maintaining equipment can be a great way for a farm family to learn mechanics together. Retrofitting used farm equipment for a more environmentally friendly use is another step in this learning process.

Many small farm families are moving toward sustainability. Every year, more consumers are becoming increasingly conscientious about purchasing more local, more organic food. In order to fill this need and to be able to compete with factory farms, the small family farmer is turning toward the environmentally friendly sustainable agriculture model. They can find their niche and strive for economic viability. Used farm tractors are one step in this process.

Used farm tractors are a positive step toward sustainable agriculture for the small family farmer. The farm family can move forward without the added worry of expensive, new equipment. Re-purposing older machines is an essential component to this greener future.
Finding a good deal can be difficult, check out my website Used Farm Tractors for more information and great deals. Also if you are looking for farm tractors for sale click here.

Machinery editor of Agriculture Online, Dave Mowitz, shares his list of the 10 tips for designing your dream farm shop. Recorded live at AG CONNECT 2010 in Orlando, Florida on January 15, 2010

Click the following link to view the video presentation: 10 Tips for designing your dream farm shop

Download the slides from this speech

If you need tools to upgrate your shop check out Power Tool Bargains for the best selection and lowest prices available anywhere.

If you don't yet have a shop and plan to build one or want to expand the size of your shop visit Pre-fab Building Bargains for great prices and selection on pre-fab buildings.

“Curves for corn and soybeans, which are two important domestic crops, are still in contango, which means as a farmer, you can still sell forward at pretty attractive relative-to-historical prices to lock in good prices for next year,” said Paul Mammola, an analyst with Sidoti & Company, LLC. “I think that although farmers have spent quite a bit over the past couple of years, the continued trend in strong commodity prices still leads to equipment purchases over the next couple of years.”
With 72 equipment stores across the Corn Belt, Titan Machinery, with a focus on high-horsepower tractors and carbines, will be a likely beneficiary of this trend toward increased farmer spending.

Mammola also points out that government stimulus dollars may play a role in accentuating industry growth in 2010, as more allocations are rolled out for road and public structure construction.

“It does sound like stimulus dollars are making their way to the companies as we speak. So water is certainly a very interesting industrial theme right now,” said Mammola, citing Crane Co. as one company that will receive bids for shovel-ready projects. “You have to break away from value investing to play with some of them given the multiples, but I think that’s going to be warranted over the next 12 months.”