Rising Tractor Prices Squeeze Farmers, Could Impact Groceries

Texas farmers, and grocery shoppers, could be facing some steep cost increases as prices go up for an iconic essential farming staple:

 The classic tractor.

“There would be some sticker shock form the consuming public if they saw the true cost of the equipment of modern agriculture,” declared Gary Joiner with the Texas Farm Bureau, “tractors that can run as much as $700,000. Some of that equipment seems out of reach.”

Between 2017 and 2023, list prices for tractors increased as much as 60 percent. Then came slow sales over last year. Tractor manufacturers cut back on production.  Now, with fewer tractors on the market, prices are headed up yet again, putting farming families in a tight squeeze.

‘More than 95% of our nation’s farms and ranches are family-owned and those economics are tight right now,” Joiner said. “Equipment costs come into that equation.”

Nationwide, with 230,662 farms, the state of Texas is Number 1 for farm tractors and a sharp increase in prices often means pain, particularly because agriculture is one industry without much room to pass along its costs when growers sell their products. “The price of the commodities is not something they can control,” Joiner explained. “Farmers and ranchers generally cannot pass on those higher costs. For the most part, they are absorbed by the farmer and rancher.”

In the supermarket, miles away from the fields, Joiner suspects grocery shoppers understand, and are attentive to, some of the challenges for growers. That could be helpful because, as rising equipment expenses hit broadly across the field, he predicts some of those expenses will eventually land in the produce aisle. “It’s not a one-to-one relation,” he said. “And it doesn’t follow it exactly, but increased cost of production will be reflected in the higher cost of goods.”