I’ve been compiling auction price data since November 1989 and writing my Machinery Pete column since 1992. Yet in all that time, there’s a timely topic I have yet to cover: how the equipment decisions you make, or don’t make, will most definitely directly affect your farm’s chances at sustainability.
Your Old Equipment Mindset is Dangerous. The farm equipment market has changed substantially. I don’t think there’s any going back. The realities of past ag downturns your father and grandfather dealt with always saw farm equipment dealers hung up with huge excess of late-model, used units. This took years to deal with and afforded farmers multiple drift out years of good deals and bargaining power on used iron.
That’s not the case now. To increase your farm’s odds at ongoing sustainability, you simply must absorb this new reality. You don’t have to like it, most won’t, but your eyes need to open on this front.
Equipment manufacturers act differently now in downturns. They quit making it. Plants close, workers get laid off and new price point protection mode is activated.
There are substantially fewer farm equipment dealer owner groups now. These larger dealers act more in consort with each other and work more directly with the manufacturers. Manufacturers provided never-before-seen levels of help and incentives back to their dealers in 2024-2025 to help them pare down late-model, used inventory.
The result has been a condensed and shorter period of tumbling used equipment values. The largest downturn in used equipment values I’ve seen was from spring 2013 through the end of 2015. This time, used values tanked in 2024. One year. By February 2025, auction pricing was stabilizing.
For example, consider the three 2021 John Deere 9570RX tractors ranging from 778 to 1,016 hours that sold at a dealer inventory reduction auction in Paris, Mo., on Nov. 6. The sale prices were $363,000, $358,000 and $349,000. The average auction price on 9570RXs is actually up 11% this year. The main driving force here is the 54.5% drop in the number of 9570RXs sold at auction this year compared to last year. Or take John Deere S790 combines, where the average auction price this year is $323,937 – only down 2.4% from last year. That’s because there’s been a 54.8% drop in the number of them sold at auction in 2025.
Things Are Different Now
The farm equipment market is shifting toward a “you buy it, we’ll build it” model. Remember 2021? It’s like that.
Your farm’s odds at sustaining into future generations depends on knowing, absorbing and acting on the realities of this new/changed farm equipment market.
Here’s a Machinery Pete Official Suggestion: Be proactive versus reactive.
If you stand on the beach looking out, watching for the coming big wave (whenever corn/beans finally move/stay higher), your window of opportunity for better “deals” on the equipment front, new or used, will be closed by the time you see it.
