As farmers stare down falling commodity prices amid a trade war in North America, the auction market for used farm equipment is seemingly defying the odds and staying strong.
One example of that strength is the recent sale of a 2024 Case IH QuadTrac Steiger 715 tractor with low operating hours.
It’s just one of a handful of recent sales that shows a trend: High-quality, well-maintained machinery is moving off dealer lots and selling at auction houses. That certainly hasn’t always been the case.
“It feels like to me, and I’ve been saying this for 10 years, the ag equipment space is slowly transitioning to a construction equipment kind of focus, where the amount of equipment out there and the dollars associated are showing more and more machines are going to auction,” says Machinery Pete on the latest Moving Iron podcast. “It used to be when I first started off in this business, if something went to auction it was either a pile of crap or it was 30 years old.”
These days, a marketing plan is important to have in place to promote your auction.
“Marketing is the biggest part of any auction, right? You have to let people know what you have, just like anything else that you’re selling,” adds Casey Seymour, who has nearly 20 years of experience in the ag equipment industry. “But the thing about the auction is it’s very time sensitive, so you also need to highlight the attributes of your auction that are going to bring people’s attention to it quickly.”
One way to drive interest is sharing the unique stories behind the machines and the farmers that bring them to auction. It helps get your potential buyers emotionally invested in the sale.
“That personal attachment goes a long way when you’re looking at how these things come together,” Seymour adds. “If it’s a classic tractor or if it’s a one-year-old tractor that’s got hardly any hours on it, tell them the story. That’s one thing I used to try to get a lot of sales guys to do is talk about the story behind the story.”
Combines, Tractors, & Cotton Picker Updates
In the used combine market, smaller capacity machines (Class 6 and 7) with a “little age on them” and in good condition are holding strong and stabilizing. And high-horsepower tractors are starting to see a “bit more adjustment” as we head into the busiest time of the year for used equipment auctions, which is March into April.
Eddie Claxton from Flynn Ag, a John Deere dealer with eight retail locations around the Mid-South, and Aaron Fintel with 21st Century Equipment in Nebraska, came up next to talk about the current state of the used cotton picker segment.
Claxton says the cotton market is at the bottom of another downswing and there are “a lot of (used) cotton pickers out there right now.”
Oftentimes, though, what’s available on the used market is not the model of choice for most cotton farmers. They usually want a John Deere CP770 model, year 2022 and up, Claxton says. But today inventory is limited for that model as well as another popular picker, John Deere’s CP690.
Looking forward, Claxton says cotton growers are going to have to weather the storm in 2025, with 2026 representing somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s if cotton prices rebound into the .70 cent range and a Farm Bill that provides relief to cotton farmers gets passed.
A couple very big “ifs”, indeed.
“We will survive and we will get through this. Because row crop tractors are another large part of our business,” Fintel says. “And those numbers are holding steady. I think that will be a bright spot for us as we continue into 2026. I don’t want everybody to think it’s all doom and gloom; there’s just not a whole bunch of bright spots in cotton right now. But we’re still going to grow it and continue to be here.”
Diving Into Tech Upgrade Kits with Deere
Finally, Kyle Berry and Clint Chaffer with John Deere’s Precision Upgrades came on to talk about add-on technologies that farmers can buy to upgrade older machines.
“I think this is the future of agriculture, especially on the equipment side,” Seymour says. “I think the biggest reason for that is, we’re sitting here (at the John Deere booth) underneath the boom of a brand new Hagie sprayer. Not everybody can afford one, but some of the technology associated with it you can still get your hands on.”
Barry (inset, center) highlighted the company’s focus on integrating modern technologies into older machines, like planters, sprayers, and tractors. And Chaffer (inset, left) drilled down into how farmers can upgrade with advanced features like high-speed planting, electric seed metering, and advanced fertilization methods like John Deere ExactShot, which helps farmers optimize fertilizer placement at planting. They also talked about the FurrowVision retorfit kit, which adds a network of cameras and sensors to the planter to provide real-time insights into conditions in the seed trench.
“It’s really all around how we enable more farmers to adopt these technologies, but at a price point that still works for them,” Barry says.
WATCH THE FULL EPISODE OF MOVING IRON HERE.
Your Next Read: Give Corn A Big Push Out Of The Starting Gate
