Buying Advice New Vegetable farmer needing Advice

WPStaude · Oct 10, 2017

Hello Everyone.

I am new to this forum, so apologies if this is in the incorrect place. I am not sure how it all works yet.

I am from South Africa and am starting a veggie farming business and need to buy a tractor.

The city where I will be farming is called Bloemfontein and the only two agents are Case and John Deere in the city.

Now I would prefer to buy new as I will be working myself and would like to have the peace of mind of a warranty.

I need about a 75kw tractor. So am looking at a JD 6100d and Case farmall JX100.

Both with cabs.

The Deere is actually out of my budget, with the Case being more affordable. But JD has about a 70% market share here.

I want to buy the case so would like some advice. The tractor will be my only tractor for the first few years and willdo everything from subsoiling/ Ripping to harrow, ploughing, rotovator and haulage.

Anyone with experience on this tractor. It is about 35% cheaper than the John Deere.

The warranty on the Green one is 2000 hours and 2 years and the Red is 1 year, 1500hours. For the price difference I dont mind, but is the shorter warranty a warning of reliability issues?

Any advice would be appreciated.

stuckmotor · Oct 10, 2017

75 kw is around 100 hp.:shocked: You must be planning on growing LOTS of vegetables. I wish you much success.

WPStaude · Oct 10, 2017

In South Africa, that is considered a small tractor. Will be planting around 10hectares of vegetables and later around 120 hectares of Maize.

Thats about 24 acres and 300 acres respectively. So Need the power to pull a 5 tine ripper and 28 disc offset for example.

WPStaude · Oct 10, 2017

The average size tractor here is 85kw.

Grandad4 · Oct 10, 2017

You have a true agricultural application for your equipment, so I would think reliability and availability of parts would be among your prime considerations. You should probably be able to get candid advice about that from nearby farmers who operate similar equipment.

nybirdman · Oct 10, 2017

Don't own either brand but around here(Northern U.S.),JD has about 70% of the Ag type tractor market with Case/New Holland a distant second.A friend just purchase a similar sized Case that you are interested in and he is happy with his choice.
JD's strength for sure is service and parts availability;farmers can't have the down time.Most of us on this sight are small change compared to a "real" farmer.