Equip Blog

This week I found myself parked in one of the soft armchairs at a Starbucks coffee shop perusing a Globe and Mail newspaper while sipping a grande Pike Blend. Leading off the Report on Business section in the paper was this headline, “Auto workers threaten triple strike”. A strike by CAW workers against all of […] Read more

Some years, it seems, you spend more time standing at the parts counter than you do sitting in the tractor seat. It’s been one of those years around here. Spring seeding started off with an incredible 10 breakdowns in five days. Granted, a couple of those problems were caused by things I should have noticed […] Read more

25 years ago a very young Case IH Corporation introduced the Magnum, the first new tractor line to be introduced after that organization was created by joining Case and International Harvester. The four models that first comprised the Magnum Series were, like the new Case IH organization, itself, a blending of the two brands. The […] Read more

If you think it’s been hot here on the prairie, you should have been in the U.S. midwest last week. Temperatures there ranged into the mid to high 30s, celcius. Along with those temperatures, there was high humidity. So much, in fact, that in the morning the rear window of my rental car was completely […] Read more

At the end of June, John Deere held a “technology summit” in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. Members of the farm media were invited, so I along with the usual gang of writers working for publications in Canada and the U.S. showed up. But this time the majority of attendees were financial securities analysts. To say […] Read more

Are you thinking about taking a car trip this summer? If you are and you can convince your wife to spend time looking at farm machinery, I have a couple of destination suggestions. First, this is John Deere’s 175th corporate birthday. And the company has updated its tourist-oriented John Deere Pavillion in Moline, Illinois. The […] Read more

Standards limiting engine emissions is something farmers all across Canada have been hearing a lot about over the last few years. Off-road diesel engines, like those powering farm equipment, have had to meet increasingly stringent limits recently. But initially developing those tough, new regulations was primarily the result of forward-looking efforts in Europe and the […] Read more

A couple of weeks ago, Statistics Canada released their latest agriculture census. Since then, a lot of page space has been taken up in a variety of farm publications discussing the findings. And there has been a lot of criticism of the Stats Can data. Key among the points some people have taken offence to […] Read more

Last week, several members of the farm media gathered at New Holland’s North American headquarters in New Holland, Pennsylvania, at the company’s invitation. During the past several years, NH hasn’t done a lot to get media attention, and this was meant to be a new beginning. Abe Hughes, II, NH’s vice president of North American […] Read more

One of the more interesting decisions to be announced in last month’s federal government budget concerned the venerable penny. Minister Flaherty said he was about to make it extinct. It simply isn’t worthwhile producing anymore in the government’s view. The discussion around that decision reminded me of something that happened a few weeks earlier. As […] Read more