There’s little doubt that the volume of prevented plant acres will impact the sale of farm machinery for the remainder of 2019 and possibly into 2020. The effects of the poor planting weather that resulted in very late planting or prevented planting of corn and soybeans earlier this year throughout much of the Midwest is still to be determined.

Cervus Equipment Corp., a 21 store John Deere dealership group, reported that overall revenue decreased 20% in the quarter, with reduced equipment sales in its Agricultural segment comprising the majority of the decrease, while a tapering of truck sales in its Transportation sector relative to the strong sales of 2018 was a secondary factor. Overall revenues include agriculture (56%) and transportation (34%) and industrial (10%) business segments.

According to the Assn. of Equipment Manufacturers’ latest sales figures covering the first half of the year, only mid-size tractor sales during the first 6 months of 2019 showed a deficit compared to the first 6 months of 2018.

Gross profit for the second quarter ended June 30, 2019, was $38.3 million, compared to $58.3 million in the comparable prior year period. Gross margin was 9.8% of net sales for the latest quarter, compared to 13.6% of net sales in the comparable prior year period. 

According to RME, once seeding was completed, market sentiment turned sharply negative as a result of broad macro-economic and political uncertainty coupled with significantly reduced sales across all departments.

Plummeting returns from sugar beet crops as a result of market liberalization in Europe has caused beet harvester production at Exel Industries to be restructured in light of falling demand for the big ticket machines.

After a disastrous year for Argentinian machinery sales in 2018, a significant recovery is seen with the record crop of 57 million metric tons of corn and 56 million metric tons of soybeans.

In this week's podcast we look at a recent CoBank report on the potential for ethanol production growth over the next decade. Also in this episode, Jack Zemlicka discusses the post-planting mindset of "selling solutions" in the Technology Corner, and we dig into some of the results of the 6th annual Strip-Till Practices study from Strip-Till Farmer, another drop in machinery loans in the Dallas Federal Reserve district and improved 2Q revenues for Art's Way.