F Y I -Successful Farming utility tractor test ,

UncleBuck01 · Jun 30, 2008

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"The Successful Farming utility tractor test was held at the Iowa State University Agronomy and Agricultural Engineering Farm near Boone, Iowa, June 23-25. Companies represented included Case IH, Deere, Mahindra, Massey-Ferguson, Montana, and New Holland. See the Successful Farming Machinery Show on RFD-TV for detailed information on the tractor test results.Results to be shown starting on Thursday, July 3."[/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Successful Farming utility tractor test: The tractor lineup[/FONT]

Farmwithjunk · Jun 30, 2008

Successful Farming has a recent history of "going with the cash flow". It'll be interesting to see just how impartial the testing is/was.

piller · Jun 30, 2008

It appears that the Successful Farming Machinery Show is scheduled to air Thurday July 3 at 8:00 pm on RFD-TV. It appears that there were no Kubota's in the utility tractor test.

Farmwithjunk: I'm not familiar with this group or their test, can you elaborate a little about their impartiality?

Farmwithjunk · Jun 30, 2008

piller said:
It appears that the Successful Farming Machinery Show is scheduled to air Thurday July 3 at 8:00 pm on RFD-TV. It appears that there were no Kubota's in the utility tractor test.

Farmwithjunk: I'm not familiar with this group or their test, can you elaborate a little about their impartiality?

Successful Farming was once upon a time, a VERY well respected AG industry magazine, run by farmers FOR farmers. In recent years it's taken on a "Mother Earth News" sort of atmosphere, catering more towards the "ranchette" crowd, collectors, and what I've always referred to as "city farmers". They also started to lean which ever way the add dollars blew the strongest. I'm sure there'll be some value to their test, but take it with a grain of salt.

For some unknown reason, Kubota has never been front and center for many side-by-side comparisons or field tests. I'd be willing to bet SF probably approached Kubota with the opportunity to participate. I wouldn't read a lot into their NOT being involved, one way or the other.

CTW · Oct 31, 2008

Farmwithjunk said:
Successful Farming was once upon a time, a VERY well respected AG industry magazine, run by farmers FOR farmers. In recent years it's taken on a "Mother Earth News" sort of atmosphere, catering more towards the "ranchette" crowd, collectors, and what I've always referred to as "city farmers". They also started to lean which ever way the add dollars blew the strongest. I'm sure there'll be some value to their test, but take it with a grain of salt.

For some unknown reason, Kubota has never been front and center for many side-by-side comparisons or field tests. I'd be willing to bet SF probably approached Kubota with the opportunity to participate. I wouldn't read a lot into their NOT being involved, one way or the other.

I subscribe to Successful Farming magazine and have noticed the same trend unfortunately. Even more so with Progressive Farmer magazine. I have watched the RFD-TV specials from time to time and seems the same thing applies to their call-in programs because they cover one particular brand of tractor. I emailed RFD on this topic and their response was "thank you for watching". Still haven't seen any posted results on the tractor test. Not much comes up on a google search either.

CTW · Nov 8, 2008

Well, I received my November issue of Successful Farming and the ultimate utility tractor test was on the front cover. I flipped to the article and their were six pages of basically nothing. They listed tractors tested and their msrp but no results, no rankings, no descriptions of test, just plain zero. Very disappointing. What's the purpose of testing 11 utility tractors when you don't publish or televise the in depth results, pros and cons, etc.?

flusher · Nov 8, 2008

CTW said:
Well, I received my November issue of Successful Farming and the ultimate utility tractor test was on the front cover. I flipped to the article and their were six pages of basically nothing. They listed tractors tested and their msrp but no results, no rankings, no descriptions of test, just plain zero. Very disappointing. What's the purpose of testing 11 utility tractors when you don't publish or televise the in depth results, pros and cons, etc.?

Not too surprising.

I assume tractor manufacturers advertise in SF. A glance at the list of advertisers in SF and the list of tractors tested might explain the lack of definitive test results in that front cover story.