Editor’s View: Tractors giving dealers and drivers a problem

About three or four times a year I get collared by a disgruntled livestock farmer who asks: “Why do you keep putting unaffordable tractors on the front cover?”

The answer is simple. More often than not, when I choose to put livestock on there or, heaven forbid, people, then fewer of you who buy it in a shop choose to do so that week.

And then the head of marketing takes me into a soundproof office and extracts my fingernails until I promise to desist.

See also: 6 high-hour tractors still going strong on progressive dairy farm

Finger mutilation notwithstanding, I like this reminder as it provides conclusive evidence of how many of you are proper dieselheads.

And there’s plenty to go at in this week’s magazine for that cohort, whether you love shiny new metal or veteran workhorses.

We have a first look at challenger brand Kioti’s new flagship model, an in-depth look at Deutz-Fahr (on the cover), and lift the bonnet on how a hard-working team at a Dorset dairy farm keep their fleet of older New Hollands running smoothly.

It does have to be acknowledged, however, that the tractor sales market is not firing on all cylinders.

Just 495 new machines were registered as sold in August, according to data from trade body AEA.

That’s less than 24 new tractors leaving forecourts nationwide for each working day, a 30.7% fall compared with the same month last year.

It’s also the latest of several months of woe for dealers, with a 14.7% decline in registrations for the calendar year, making it the poorest set of results for four years.

Meanwhile, sellers of second-hand machinery also report that spending has dried up this summer to a greater extent than normal.

That says a lot about the price of these machines and the in-year profitability of farming (or lack of it) which is constraining investment and likely driving businesses into alternative options such as kit sharing or using contractors.

For English farmers, SFI’s non-food-producing options, which require little tractor work to establish and maintain, may also be throttling back demand for horsepower.

If you have money to spend and a machine in mind, autumn may be the season for a bargain.

A look at the Letters page, though, will reveal that to buy or not to buy is not the most divisive tractor-linked question of the moment. Instead, it is whether children should be in cabs.

The law is clear on the matter – no child under the age of 13 should be accompanying a driver.

Yet it doesn’t take Poirot to work out that this is possibly farming’s most widely flouted law, given the debate that sprang up over Farmer Focus writer Colin Murdoch’s column last week.

He’d like a rule change to reflect that tractor cabs have improved enormously since the law’s inception.

This seems unlikely, given farming’s safety record. HSE’s stance is that the safest place for children is away from the workplace altogether.

But nothing puts people’s hackles up like being told how to raise their kids. A solution seems a long way off.