By Sarah Wallace

Farm equipment sales strong for local retailer

Dec 4, 2013 | 5:55 AM

With Saskatchewan producing a massive amount of grain this year, Farm World of Prince Albert is seeing strong equipment sales.

“Right in this area and west of Prince Albert, crops have been very good and sales have been very supportive of that, so we had a strong year again and good equipment sales for this year,” said Tex Prete, who operates Farm World in Prince Albert.

He said sales have also been strong because, “I think we had a good crop again this year, we had a nice harvest so the crop went into the bin in good quality, and there’s a fairly good volume there.”

“Some of the areas east of Prince Albert and farther, there was too much rain in the spring and so those crops were a little less favourable and so not quite as many sales in that area, but when you get east towards Tisdale and beyond, then the crops are very good and again equipment sales are directly related to how well the crop is.”

The biggest challenge for producers now is getting their grain to market because of the issues with the railways.

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“We have customers that are pricing new equipment and some good used equipment, but the concern is when the grain is going to move, so definitely the grain handling system seems to be bottlenecked right now and waiting for the rail cars to move. So, it’s going to take time to flow that grain through and a lot of our producers are waiting for the opportunity to ship grain and of course get paid,” Prete said.

He said from their perspective, the bottleneck is due in part to the large amount of grain, but he said it is also due to the rail system moving a lot of other commodities as well.

“I think it’s just a supply issue of actual cars and maybe somewhat the world markets, they’re not really aggressive right now and so that may be is holding up a bit of the sales too … so there are a few factors slowing down the grain movement this year.”

As the industry has changed in the last few years, they are seeing more people in their 30s and 40s coming in, while in the past it’s been producers older than that.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid