Farm machinery sales 2026 are signaling deep financial stress across North American agriculture. According to data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, sales of big-ticket items like tractors and combines fell between 30% and 40% in the United States in March compared to the same month a year ago. Farmers are still spending money on equipment, but they are cutting sharply on the expensive machines that anchor a farm’s long-term productivity and instead limiting purchases to smaller, lower-cost implements.
The pattern played out in real time at farm shows across North America this spring. Chad Jones of manufacturer Degelman Industries described the dynamic from the floor of Canada’s Farm Show in March: farmers are not walking away from equipment entirely, but they are making very different decisions than they did in prior years. A farmer might skip the million-dollar combine and buy a $100,000 implement instead. That shift, multiplied across thousands of operations across the continent, is reshaping the farm equipment market at a moment when manufacturers were already absorbing the cost pressure from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Farm machinery sales 2026 hit by tariffs on top of weak crop prices
The collapse in farm machinery sales 2026 has two compounding causes. The first is the direct cost of the tariffs. Tractors and combines, known as “big iron” in the industry, are manufactured with large quantities of steel and often rely on imported components. Steel and aluminum have been subject to a 50% tariff for close to a year, adding substantially to production costs. John Deere said in its most recent quarterly earnings call that it estimates the tariffs will cost the company $1.2 billion in 2026 alone, and that not all of the tariff costs from 2025 had been passed through to farmers. Trump called on manufacturers the previous week to cut prices to help farmers, but the industry’s response was direct: the simplest way to reduce machinery prices would be to significantly scale back the tariffs hitting both manufacturers and farmers, according to Kip Eideberg of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
The second cause is the state of commodity markets. A global grain glut has pushed crop prices down, with China absent from the U.S. soybean export market for months. That absence has depressed North American crop prices and built up large stockpiles that are weighing on farm income projections. A Farm Credit official told Reuters that farmers were looking at profitability being very tight to even potentially negative for the upcoming growing season, and that this financial outlook is directly driving slower decisions on equipment replacement.
Tariff structure for farm equipment could get more expensive
The current tariff environment for farm machinery could tighten further. The Trump administration has been reported to be planning an additional 25% tariff on the total value of finished imported goods that contain steel and aluminum, rather than applying the tariff only to the metals content of those goods. For most consumer products that would represent a change in approach, but goods that are primarily composed of steel and aluminum, including tractors and combines, would still face the existing 50% tariff rate. The net effect would be higher effective tariff burdens on the inputs that go into building farm equipment, with the industry’s supply chain already stretched by cost pressures on both sides of the border. For more context on how John Deere has been navigating regulatory and financial pressure in 2026, Agroinformacion has been tracking the John Deere disputes with farmers throughout this cycle.
What farmers are buying and what they are leaving on the lot?
The spending shift in farm machinery sales 2026 is not a complete shutdown of the market. Farmers are still purchasing, but the emphasis has moved to lower-cost, high-utility implements that keep existing equipment running rather than replacing it with new machines. Harrows, rockpickers, rippers, and similar field tools are still moving. What is sitting on dealer lots is the high-value equipment that requires farmers to commit to multi-year payments during a period when income visibility is very low.
That dynamic puts equipment dealers in a difficult position. Their floor plans are built around moving large machines through inventory at a reasonable rate, and a sustained decline in big-ticket sales creates cash flow pressure along the entire dealer network. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers noted that sales have been falling broadly, not just in isolated pockets, suggesting the shift reflects a wide change in farmer confidence rather than regional factors. The original Reuters report on farm machinery sales 2026 was published on April 3, 2026, and distributed via U.S. News and World Report.