The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Friday the 9th of February 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

21 days to go

Our FarmTender2024 - Entrepreneurs in Farming event is not far away. Click here for more info. See the media release here.

New Gear prices to drop

According to a Machinery expert, I spoke to yesterday, new Machinery prices are going to drop as Dealers' yards fill and supply chains return to some form of normality. He said a John Deere S790 Header and Front might drop from, say, around $1.1m down to $1m. This is on the back of the Note yesterday that some people are shunning new and only buying used on the back of the recent run of price increases. We have heard that Dealers have called in their sales team to say the honeymoon is over, and they will have to work harder for their commissions. Would a 10 percent drop in new prices sway you to buy something new? Reply to [email protected]

Click and Collect

The same Machinery expert that is tipping a drop said Machinery manufacturers like John Deere are looking at a click-and-collect system where Farmers just enter the specs they want and get a set price, which then gets forwarded to the appropriate Dealer via John Deere's head office. He said the Dealership then becomes more of a distribution hub. I'm not sure about this one. Suppose the Manufacturer is going to take the Dealer out of one of the steps, then they aren't going to be too happy. We saw this happen with Mercedes Benz Dealers in Australia, and it's still in court because the Dealers got together to fight it. Any sort of power loss at the Dealer level will be met with resistance, I would think. Are we at the point of click and collect for New Machinery, or is it 5 or 10 years away yet? Reply to [email protected]

Tough 12 months

I was speaking to a Livestock Agent earlier in the week, and he said it's been a tough 12 months for him and his colleagues. He said the shine has been taken off the job a little, and some Agents that are in their 50s and 60s were feeling a little flat with the job despite it picking up recently. As we get older, we become more of a specialist, and we drop off some of the tasks we did in our younger days. And when our roles become a little harder to do or when we have to do more to get the same result, then people start to question what they are doing. Have you ever felt a loss of motivation for something you once loved doing? Reply to [email protected]

Your replies

Below are snippets from some of the replies you sent in. All quotes will remain nameless. See a few current ones below:

• “Contact the shire about getting something done, mainly roads; the answer is “There is no money in the budget to do that”. - In reply to our Note on Shires and Councils.

• “The car companies are selling us the engine we have now for the same price. Therefore, the new engines won’t be more expensive even after they have put all the extra equipment on them to make them more efficient and cleaner, they have to add less reliability to that as well”. - In regards to what might be around the corner with EU-rated engines.

• “WB Holdens (I wish I'd kept mine) have become collectors' items.  Bathurst Falcon GTs cost a king's ransom. Isn't hindsight wonderful?” - In regards to our Note about Utes.

• “It would be good for coffee shops as we will need to stop for an hour every two hours”. - Someone with a tongue-in-cheek remark on EVs.

• “Obviously, they are not production savvy!!” - They are referring to the Government and the potential abolishment of the Ute.

• “If you drive your Ute on the tollways in Melbourne, you will pay significantly more than a car as Utes are already in the light Truck category”. - On our Note about changing the Ute category to light Truck.

• “I managed to buy a new Tractor in this time but the Air Seeders blew out of my price range. Especially when the old girl is still Sowing the Crops just as well as a fancy new $600k setups. I just Sow later into the night”. - In regard to our Note about some Farmers ditching buying New Gear and just upgrading with second hand.

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

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