Buying Advice John Deere compared to Kubota

[Peter 315]

A lot of the larger trucks goes on export, the dealers doesn't bother to sell them locally, larger construction equipment is the same, very hard to sell as companies don't hire in older machines.

A guy comes around my area just looking for Mack trucks and Cat equipment and parts to export

 

[Agvg]

A guy comes around my area just looking for Mack trucks and Cat equipment and parts to export

Strange tractors don't follow, a lot of Ford, MF and IH is quite the same in us as rest of the world, suppose there are a lot of gas tractors but for parts they should be much the same as a diesel. I se a lot of old trucks blown up in Iraq, seems to be mostly well used European trucks, Old Volvo trucks has had a very big market in Bolivia and surrounding areas. Is Mexico and countries more south a market for old US equipment?

 

[ptsg]

I can try and give a perspective a bit more towards west from Agvg.

I'll start to say the JD doesn't even comes into play here. They simply don't sell compact tractors here.

The smallest HP tractor they sell are the 5E Series made in India going from 50 to 75HP and they leave much to be desired. Every once in a while, a used CUT JD pops up for sale, but it's a imported unit.

Now for the new units sold in the last couple years:

The leader up to 50HP, is shared between Kubota and New Holland with a small 2% or so diference between each other. While Kubota leads from 18 to 40 HP, New Holland takes lead from 40 to 60HP.

Then, we have LS and Kioti very close to the top ones. Kioti grew up quite a ways up till the end of last year, and actually took over Kubota and NH. Mostly due to the good dealer network and assistance. But I'm pretty sure that due to lack of knowledge, most people think that Kioti it's an affordable version of Kubota.

Further though the list, there are Landini, Lamborghini, Deutz, Same, that used to be the big boys on the compact market but the Korean/Japanese brands just took over completely.

Moving on the list, we see Branson, Iseki and TYM with a solid and steady growth. MF a bit further down the list.

The various Chinese brands have been growing slowly. But lack of service/parts may be a problem.

This is a list of units sold as of the third trimester of 2019. Keep in mind, this is a small country, so you won't see massive numbers here.

Kioti 245 unidades
Kubota 232 unidades
New Holland 222 unidades
LS Tractors 209 unidades
Landini 72 unidades
Deutz -Fahr 70 unidades

 

[Agvg]

How does farming look like in Portugal?

Do you have small scale farming?

 

[ovrszd]

Yes, the US is young, if I go to church where I have my farm the church was taken in use in year 1200.

In the neighbor county they have this viking inspired church form 1180 built with wood.

Very humbling. I visited a Castle ruins in Germany that was built around 1200. The entrance door threshold was a slab stone. It was worn down 2" in the middle. How many footprints does it take to do that?

 

[ptsg]

How does farming look like in Portugal?

Do you have small scale farming?

We have pretty much everything. From small scale to big scale farming with the big boys JD, Fendt, Case and so on.

North and Center of Portugal we have mostly small and medium scale farms, with a few large scales farms near the rivers for rice farming.

Down South is where our biggest farms are. One of them have two big articulated JD tractors, the only two on the country, along with a few Fendt 900 series.

 

[Agvg]

Here small farms are mostly just homes, the farm land is rented out to larger farms, we have strict laws that keeps the land in use, this has historical reasons as only 3 % of Norway's area are farmland. Corn, potato and some vegetables and fruits are farmed. The basis on a lot of farms are sheep, we have very large areas in the forests and mountains that is used to feed sheep's, release then in the wild in May and collects them in September, and of course cows and some goats but the number of goats has been free falling for years.

 

[Cahaba Valley Farm]

The reason is the law, ownership of farms has been regulated so it has been almost impossible to sell it outside the family, bloodline gave you absolute rights, to day it's limited to children and grandchildren, untill in the seventies it was only males that had the right.

This law is in the constitution and has roots back to the viking age so it's over 1000 years old.

That's crazy!

 

[ovrszd]

To put this in perspective.

Portugal's size is 35,603 square miles

Norway's size is 148,728 square miles

U.S. size is 3,797,000 square miles

 

[ultrarunner]

The reason is the law, ownership of farms has been regulated so it has been almost impossible to sell it outside the family, bloodline gave you absolute rights, to day it's limited to children and grandchildren, untill in the seventies it was only males that had the right.

This law is in the constitution and has roots back to the viking age so it's over 1000 years old.

It is similar in Austria where the family farm has been family going back 300 years...

The oldest male had right of refusal but with ownership came a lot of responsibilities... all the unmarried women would be wards of the farm until the day they died... the farm also had to support the parents and grandparents and greats if there were any...

My grandmother was an exception as there were no male heirs so as the oldest female the farm was hers and made her a very good catch for a young man wanting to farm and not being the oldest...

I do see tractors of every kind in Europe just few Japanese... it was like this for Japanese cars until the late 80's... they simply were not a market sector but now things are different... having 3 models with preset options influenced many... as the German cars were typically ordered and high end cars required more than money to buy... you had to meet status requirements to buy a 600 Mercedes as an example... the Japanese making A/C standard on the top level really did influence the playing field.

The farms in this region today have very nice tractors... mostly Fendt and Styer dominate.

Going back to the 1950's the single cylinder diesel Styer replaced the oxen or horses... kind of what happened in the US 30 years prior with the Fordson.

One barrier to entry has been high import duties often make products outside the EU less competitive and the cost/availability of parts has remained an issue... where as anything for a VW or Mercedes was easy to get.

As with most things strong Dealer support can make or break local market penetration...

Honda is one example that has been 100% accepted for cars and machinery... like generators.

As to farming the local farms are almost exclusively Diary but this is due to the mountain terrain...

In areas with large open fields the tractors are big... and the farms bigger...