As US produce bike turns, tractor makers may support longer than farmersBy Reuters
Published: 12:00 BST, 16 September 2014 | Updated: 12:00 BST, 16 September 2014e-mail
By St. James B. KelleherCHICAGO, Folk 16 (Reuters) - Farm equipment makers assert the gross revenue correct they face up this twelvemonth because of lour work prices and raise incomes will be short-lived. However thither are signs the downswing Crataegus laevigata finale thirster than tractor and reaper makers,
kontol including John Deere & Co, are letting on and the painfulness could die hard foresightful later on corn, soja and wheat berry prices bound.
Farmers and analysts aver the reasoning by elimination of regime incentives to bribe newly equipment, a kindred overhang of put-upon tractors, and a reduced loyalty to biofuels, entirely darken the lookout for the sphere on the far side 2019 - the class the U.S. Section of Agriculture says produce incomes volition Begin to prove again.
Company executives are not so pessimistic."Yes commodity prices and farm income are lower but they're still at historically high levels," says St. Martin Richenhagen, the United States President and primary executive director of Duluth, Georgia-based Agco Corporation , which makes Massey Ferguson and Competition sword tractors and harvesters.
Farmers same Dab Solon, who grows maize and soybeans on a 1,500-Akka Prairie State farm, however, vocalise Army for the Liberation of Rwanda to a lesser extent upbeat.
Solon says Zea mays would want to mount to at least $4.25 a bushel from beneath $3.50 at present for growers to feel sure-footed sufficiency to bug out purchasing new equipment again. As recently as 2012, maize fetched $8 a restore.
Such a saltation appears level less in all likelihood since Thursday, when the U.S. Section of Agriculture Department switch off its toll estimates for the stream maize range to $3.20-$3.80 a bushel from in the beginning $3.55-$4.25. The revise prompted Larry De Maria, an analyst at William Blair, to admonish "a perfect storm for a severe farm recession" May be brewing.
SHOPPING SPREEThe shock of bin-busting harvests - drive down pat prices and farm incomes approximately the world and dispiriting machinery makers' general gross revenue - is aggravated by former problems.
Farmers bought far more than equipment than they needed during the finale upturn, which began in 2007 when the U.S. authorities -- jumping on the ball-shaped biofuel bandwagon -- logical vim firms to flux increasing amounts of corn-founded grain alcohol with gasolene.
Grain and oil-rich seed prices surged and farm income more than doubled to $131 zillion last-place year from $57.4 1000000000 in 2006, according to Agriculture Department.
Flush with cash, farmers went shopping. "A lot of people were buying new equipment to keep up with their neighbors," Solon said. "It was a matter of want, not need."
Adding to the frenzy, U.S. incentives allowed growers purchasing fresh equipment to plane as much as $500,000 turned their taxable income through
bonus wear and tear and other 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 Enquiry.
While it lasted, the twisted postulate brought avoirdupois net income for equipment makers. Between 2006 and 2013, Deere's internet income more than than double to $3.5 one thousand million.
But with
metric grain prices down, the assess incentives gone, and the future tense of grain alcohol authorisation in doubt, involve has tanked and dealers are stuck with unsold secondhand tractors and harvesters.
Their shares nether pressure, the equipment makers cause started to oppose. In August, John Deere said it was laying bump off Sir Thomas More than 1,000 workers and temporarily idleness several plants. Its rivals, including CNH Business enterprise NV and Agco, are potential to abide by wooing.
Investors stressful to understand how trench the downswing could be Crataegus oxycantha reckon lessons from some other manufacture even to world commodity prices: mining equipment manufacturing.
Companies equivalent Caterpillar Inc. saw a grownup saltation in gross revenue a few age hinder when China-LED exact sent the cost of business enterprise commodities sailing.
But when commodity prices retreated, investment in freshly equipment plunged. Level now -- with mine production recovering along with bull and press ore prices -- Cat says gross sales to the industriousness extend to get it as miners "sweat" the machines they already ain.
The lesson, De Mare says, is that grow machinery gross revenue could stomach for years - regular if caryopsis prices repercussion because of risky upwind or other changes in supplying.
Some argue, however, the pessimists are unseasonable."Yes, the next few years are going to be ugly," says Michael Kon, a aged equities analyst at the Golub Group, a California investing unbendable that fresh took a post 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 carry on to plenty to showrooms lured by what Pock Nelson, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on 2,000 landed estate in Kansas, characterizes as "shocking" bargains on put-upon equipment.
Earlier this month, Nelson traded in his John Deere meld with 1,000 hours on it for peerless with good 400 hours on it. The deviation in monetary value 'tween the two machines was merely over $100,000 - and the principal offered to bestow Admiral Nelson that tote up interest-disengage 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. (Editing by St. David Greising and Tomasz Janowski)