John Deere

The world's largest farm equipment maker, Deere and Co., expects sales of its agricultural equipment to decline by 5-10 percent globally in the year ahead due to lower demand for big machinery. "Lingering trade tensions coupled with a year of difficult growing and harvesting conditions have caused many farmers to become cautious about making major investments in new equipment," said chief executive John May.

Farmers are sitting on their checkbooks instead of buying new equipment because of the Sino-U.S. trade war and planting delays in the United States, said the chief executive of Deere and Co., the world's largest farm equipment manufacturer. Deere, which also makes construction and logging equipment, said overall sales fell 3 percent during May, June and July, led by a 6- percent drop in agriculture and turf, its largest division.

Analysts predict that John Deere will raise its profit forecasts for the year on Friday, despite a dismal year for crop prices. Bloomberg reports that a possible reason for the company’s rising profits could be the mechanical needs of large, consolidated mega-farms.

John Deere’s $305 million purchase of Blue River Technology, “a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants, and shooting them with deadly, high-precision squirts of herbicide,” is yet another indication of the “growing appetite for high tech in agriculture,” says Wired.

In response to a Justice Department lawsuit, Deere and Co., the world's largest farm equipment maker, says its purchase of a competitor, Precision Planting, will expand farmers' ability to update their planters and will not reduce competition for planter sales.