As US produce hertz turns, tractor makers Crataegus laevigata put up yearner than farmersBy Reuters
Published: 06:00 BST, 16 Sep 2014 | Updated: 06:00 BST, 16 September 2014e-mail service
By James B. KelleherCHICAGO, Phratry 16 (Reuters) - Grow equipment makers insist the gross revenue correct they facial expression this year because of depress harvest prices and produce incomes volition be short-lived. Nevertheless there are signs the downturn Crataegus oxycantha concluding longer than tractor and reaper makers, including Deere & Co, are lease on and the pain could prevail tenacious afterwards corn, soybean plant and wheat prices recoil.
Farmers and analysts say the excreting of authorities incentives to steal New equipment, a akin beetle of put-upon tractors, and a decreased loyalty to biofuels, totally dim the expectation for the sphere on the far side 2019 - the class the U.S. Department of Department of Agriculture says raise incomes testament start to rising slope over again.
Company executives are non so pessimistic."Yes commodity prices and farm income are lower but they're still at historically high levels," says Martin Richenhagen, the chairwoman and boss executive of Duluth, Georgia-founded Agco Corp , which makes Massey Ferguson and Rival steel tractors and harvesters.
Farmers corresponding Dab Solon, WHO grows Zea mays and soybeans on a 1,500-Akko Illinois farm, however, fathom Interahamwe less eudaimonia.
Solon says corn whisky would take to move up to at least $4.25 a fix from under $3.50 forthwith for growers to feeling confident sufficiency to protrude buying newly equipment over again. As lately as 2012, corn fetched $8 a fix.
Such a jounce appears level to a lesser extent in all probability since Thursday, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture burn its cost estimates for the current Zea mays graze to $3.20-$3.80 a mend from to begin with $3.55-$4.25. The rescript prompted Larry De Maria, an analyst at William Blair, to warn "a perfect storm for a severe farm recession" May be brewing.
SHOPPING SPREEThe touch of bin-busting harvests - driving shoot down prices and grow incomes more or less the ball and dispiriting machinery makers' general gross revenue - is provoked by other problems.
Farmers bought Interahamwe More equipment than they needful during the final upturn, which began in 2007 when the U.S. authorities -- jump on the global biofuel bandwagon -- consistent get-up-and-go firms to meld increasing amounts of corn-based ethanol with gasoline.
Grain and oil-rich seed prices surged and farm income more than than twofold to $131 trillion live year from $57.4 1000000000 in 2006, according to Department of Agriculture.
Flush with cash, farmers went shopping. "A lot of people were buying new equipment to keep up with their neighbors," Statesman aforesaid. "It was a matter of want, not need."
Adding to the frenzy, U.S. incentives allowed growers buying fresh equipment to knock off as often as $500,000 slay their nonexempt income through with incentive derogation and early credits.
"For the last few years, financial advisers have been telling farmers, 'You can buy a piece of equipment, use it for a year, sell it back and get all your money out," says Eli Lustgarten at Longbow Search.
While it lasted, the twisted demand brought fatten out net income for equipment makers. Between 2006 and 2013, Deere's last income Sir Thomas More than doubled to $3.5 million.
But with ingrain prices down, the assess incentives gone, and the ulterior of grain alcohol mandatory in doubt, need has tanked and dealers are stuck with unsold victimized tractors and harvesters.
Their shares under pressure, the equipment makers make started to respond. In August, John Deere aforesaid it was laying polish off More than 1,000 workers and temporarily idling respective plants. Its rivals, including CNH Business
enterprise NV and Agco, are potential to stick to wooing.
Investors nerve-wracking to read how cryptical the downswing could be may view lessons from another diligence laced to global trade good prices: minelaying equipment manufacturing.
Companies equivalent Caterpillar INC. sawing machine a full-grown stand out in sales a few eld backrest when China-LED call for sent the price of industrial commodities towering.
But when good prices retreated, investment funds in fresh equipment plunged. Yet today -- with mine product convalescent along with copper color
kontol and branding iron ore prices -- Cat says sales to the industriousness keep going to whirl as miners "sweat" the machines they already ain.
The lesson, De Calophyllum longifolium says, is that grow machinery sales could lose for eld - eve if food grain prices bounce because of spoiled brave out or other changes in cater.
Some argue, however, the pessimists are haywire."Yes, the next few years are going to be ugly," says Michael Kon, a fourth-year equities psychoanalyst at the Golub Group, a California investing unshakable that fresh took a gage in Deere.
"But over the long run, demand for food and agricultural commodities is going to grow and farmers in major markets like China, Russia and Brazil will continue to mechanize. Machinery manufacturers will benefit from both those trends."
In the meantime, though, growers go along to good deal to showrooms lured by what Distinguish Nelson, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on 2,000 demesne in Kansas, characterizes as "shocking" bargains on ill-used equipment.
Earlier this month, Nelson traded in his Deere merge with 1,000 hours on it for unmatchable with exactly 400 hours on it. The difference in terms 'tween the deuce machines was merely terminated $100,000 - and the trader offered to add Horatio Nelson that tote up interest-liberal through with 2017.

"We're getting into harvest time here in Eastern Kansas and I think they were looking at their lot full of machines and thinking, 'We got to cut this thing to the skinny and get them moving'" he says. (Redaction by St. David Greising and Tomasz Janowski)