Irish farmers went on a huge spending spree last year, forking out over €200 million on 4,221 new tractors and driving sales to a 20-year high in the Republic.
The figures, which were released by the farm machinery trade, also showed that farmers purchased 3,152 used tractors last year. There is a large used tractor trade between the Republic and Northern Ireland which could account for as many as 3,000 more tractors.
Tractor sales have traditionally been used as a barometer of the health of the farming sector and the figures would seem to indicate the sector is in rude good health with total sales of 7,373 units.
FTMTA, the farm machinery organisation which compiled the data, said that the average horsepower of an Irish tractor is now around 100hp. And with the average new vehicle of this capacity costing in the region of €50,000, it has estimated that the total spend on new vehicles was €210 million.
The Farm Tractor and Machinery Trade Association's chief executive, Michael Moroney, said during the week that a number of factors had contributed to the rise in sales. He said that the payment of the Single Farm Payment to farmers early in the year had contributed to the fact that nearly 25 per cent or 1,000 of the new vehicles were registered in January of last year. However, he said, farmers tended to register their new vehicles in January purely for cost and depreciation reasons.
Mr Moroney said one surprising fact from the figures was that almost 600 of the newly-registered tractors were purchased in Galway and Mayo. He said that because the construction industry was the largest source of alternative income for farmers, some of the new vehicles would have been purchased for this trade.
Farmers received their highest ever payments from the EU in 2006 because of a changeover in EU policy which gave them a single payment. In addition, monies were owed from the previous year.
The total payout came to just over €2.3 billion, much of which was spend on farm inputs and updating machinery, according to surveys. Tractor sales have been rising steadily since the beginning of this century.
In 2001 tractor sales totalled 5,128 and this figure included 2,681 new vehicles. By 2003, sales of new and used tractors had reached just over 6,000 units, 2,970 of which were new tractors.
The figures were released by FTMTA as part of the publicity drive for its Farm Machinery Show which takes place at Punchestown from February 6th-8th inclusive.
The event will the largest held to date with 105 individual stand places inside the complex and 37 outdoor display areas.