Trends in Forage Equipment Sales

Trends in Forage Equipment Sales

Mike Rankin
Crops and Soils Agent
University of Wisconsin - Extension

At this year’s Wisconsin Forage Symposium, Kevin Shinners, UW-Madison Ag Engineer, reported on the current state of the U.S. forage equipment industry. He looked at both past trends and what is expected in the future. One of the major changes in the past ten years has been a shift toward increased sales of disk-type mower-conditioners and windrowers. In the mid-1990’s, sickle mower-conditioners accounted for 65 percent of the market. Today, their market share is 40 percent and it’s falling each year. Of course the advantage of the disk mower is the ability to cut hay at speeds that are about 50 percent faster than the sickle types.

Sales of pull-type forage harvesters have declined nearly 50 percent in the past ten years. Conversely, sales of self-propelled units have almost doubled. Shinners explained that the pull-type harvester market was temporarily buoyed by the ability to put crop processors in the larger pull-type units, but doesn’t expect major design changes in the future because of the limited market.

Self-propelled harvesters continue to get bigger. Today’s largest machines are able to chop 10 corn rows at a time and are powered by 650 horsepower engines. As smaller self-propelled units are traded-in, Shinners thinks there will be many producers who buy these used units rather than a new pull-type machine.

Looking at the baler market, the large round baler remains the largest selling segment but it’s losing ground to the large square baler. This certainly is the case locally. The most surprising part of the baler market is the small but relatively constant demand for small square balers. This is attributed to the growing commercial horse industry. Horse owners generally prefer the smaller hay packages. Shinners doesn’t expect to see major engineering changes in small square balers but does expect to see product development that will enable the bundling of small square bales. This will make handling and transportation more efficient.

What’s the future hold for forage equipment?

Shinners sees mower-conditioners getting larger (increased cutting width) to better match the harvest capacity of self-propelled harvesters and large square balers. Aside from size, future mower-conditioners will utilize global positioning systems (GPS) to allow for “auto-steer” features. This will reduce or eliminate overlap inefficiencies when mowing.

Forage harvesters probably won’t get much larger because they will exceed the capacity to haul and properly pack forage in bunker silos. The forage harvester of the future will become more efficient by having such features such as automatic spout aiming, row guidance, and adjustment of conditioner rolls.

In addition to the above, look for forage equipment to better utilize GPS for monitoring and mapping yields. Also look for improvements in methods and equipment to increase forage dry down rates

For more information contact Mike Rankin