The used sprayer market is shaping up to be a buyer’s market. That’s due to an oversupply in the market, and dealers are hauling a lot of late-model machines down to auctions to free up lot space.
On the flip side, strong buyer demand for older sprayers (10+ years) in good condition and a shortage of brand-new machines is holding those decade old machines rock solid on price, or even driving prices above what some would consider market value.
“2025 is looking like a pretty good time to look for that three-, four-, or five-year-old sprayer, to try and get ahead of the market before it flips and everyone wants to buy a new one (in 2026),” Greg “Machinery Pete” Peterson said. “You don’t want to buy when everyone else is buying. When any market becomes about availability, pricing goes right out the window.”
Moving Iron host Casey Seymour, who has almost 20 years of experience in the ag equipment industry, specifically tracking used equipment trends at the dealership level, agreed.
“The only thing that’s going to be out there to buy right now is going to be that late-model, low hour machine and I think we’re going to see a great opportunity for a big run on used equipment here in the last quarter of the year and going into 2026,” Seymour said.
Sprayer Segment Activity and Retrofit Options
Matt Raasch, AgriVision Equipment, says December was an average month for used equipment buying and selling activity, and January saw more action than normal. February did start out slowly, but he chalks that up to some of the poor weather across the Midwest.
“As I talk to other dealers, I’d say sprayers is probably the one category that comes up the most as far as level of concern, just with the number of units out there, and that inventory just continues to grow,” Raasch says. “The other thing I’m watching is the model mix, that used to be where we were pretty scattered as far as models and size of booms, and now everyone has the 120’ booms.”
In the retrofit segment, technologies such as John Deere’s See & Spray are moving the needle and seeing good uptake from farmers and custom applicators alike. That’s because farmers in general are more open to sprayer technology upgrades.
“They’re received better than planter, (upgrades),” says used equipment specialist Aaron Fintel. “On a planter you have virtually an entire new machine, and on a sprayer, you’re doing the, to use a bad term, the fancy stuff, the precision (ag) – it’s that next page for your farm.”
Commodities Update
Knowing the commodity market influences machinery movement, Rich Posson with Ag Financial joined the podcast to talk about where commodity prices are headed.
Posson says the markets started off slowly, but things are starting to wake up heading into spring planting.
“If you have strong prices from fall harvest into the next year’s growing season, and then you get a crop problem, that’s your larger, better bull market,” Posson says. “If you looked at it last year it was down, but this year it’s trending higher, it’s working. All that tells us is there’s even more upside (in the markets) if we do get that crop problem. The market has a good demand situation going for it.”
Posson is comfortable predicting corn, soybeans and wheat will see price increases later this summer. The trade situation with China isn’t something to worry about with corn and wheat exports because strong demand from South America and other export markets such as England and Japan can close that gap. China pulling back its purchases does have potential to negatively influence the soybean markets, he adds.
“I’m going to go a bit optimistic on China, they’re going to be OK,” Posson says. “But the rest boils down to, as far as our exports, the trade wars.”
