Buy British - buy the right to post Brexit grant aid ?

[James W]

£700-800million worth of new tractors are registered each year in Britain and £1billion pounds worth of second hand tractors are bought and sold each year in the UK. With servicing this comes to £2billion a year.

Add general machinery purchases from JD, Claas, Massey, Deutz, Fendt, Kverneland , Vaderstad, Pottinger, Horshe, Knocklerbing, Lemken etc etc the figure climbs to nearer £4billion.

It is shameful to think that only 10% of these machinery sales produce returns for the UK.

Why are we voluntarily killing off our manfacturing industry whilst building mainland Europe up ever stronger?

The British farming industry, as a whole, is hopelessly short sighted. The British people who fund this country and eat our food need jobs too. The British people fund British farmers via grant aid and by food consumption. Farmers should know about 'not killing the goose who lays the golden egg'

The John Deere factory in Mannheim employs 3000 people and builds £2.5billion of John Deere equipment per year. The UK is the biggest customer of this equipment.

Will we farmers end up marching in Hyde Park? to 'stop cheap imports and maintain area aid' after Brexit?? ...

If we do all end up in Hyde Park in 2 years time please dont take your Claas combine, or ride into town on your beautiful £180,000 Fendt, the irony would be on the richter scale.

 

[SimonD]

So the UK needs to find where in the larger scale it fits because it's not going to dethrone the likes of Fendt & Claas. I don't think it's an intentional slight against UK plc, just the fact that these major manufacturers have considerable RnD and produce some excellent kit.

The question could be what does uk agriculture already feed into the EU that can be enhanced or what other opportunities are there? I don't blame your sentiment James, I think uk manufacturing across multiple industries is in decline.

 

[James W]

Fendt and Claas are iconic quality brands and its understandable that they sell well.
But all the foreign implements we use ?... there is no excuse for that. You got Cousins, Claydon, Sumo, Weaving etc so names like Vaderstad shouldnt be pulled by our tractors.
I am pretty sure that if you were to set up a UK cultivator manufacturing company and called it 'Schnieder' it would sell better in the UK than if you called it Browns Farm Equipment. Not trying to be amusing here.. its the sad mentality of farmers who get the grants and then pull up the ladder on the other UK industries by buying John Deeres from Germany.
JCB and New Holland are equally iconic machinery manufacturers compared to the European counterparts.
We are just changing our last foreign machine from an excellent Deutz combine to a NewHolland. We bought a NH combine last year and the output and sample is extroadinary, NH all the way. All our teleporters are now JCB s/h though.

 

[SimonD]

All valid.
It's good to see companies like Primewest who make Cross Slot under license, more a collaborative.

Agree with mentality but why has this developed in the first place?

 

[bumkin]

as you might already know we used to have a tractor industry but it either failed or was bought out the failure was mainly due to lack of r&d as far as i know we only have J C B thats british and New Holland build some tractors here in G B

 

[James W]

i just dont know, i really dont. British farmers have bought everything BUT British kit since the war. So all the old UK firms went like David Brown , Ransomes... what did they do wrong ? i hate to say this, but whilst there were still charred bodies lieing in burnt-out Spitfires at the bottom of the English channel , Claas combines were coming over the war graves on ferry boats while there was still rationing... the term 'beggars belief' does not come close.
This might cause some eyebrows to be raised but i will say it anyway because farmers need a boot up the patriotic ass... A hotelier in our town who died 25 years ago was famous for not letting Japanese stay in his hotel... Why ? ... because he was under Japanese work torture on the railways in Burma in the 2nd World War, he was one of 20% who survived on his section of railroad. If that hotelier had been a farmer and had been burnt with fire jelly at Dunkirk, would he have bought a Claas...

 

[bumkin]

Fendt and Claas are iconic quality brands and its understandable that they sell well.
But all the foreign implements we use ?... there is no excuse for that. You got Cousins, Claydon, Sumo, Weaving etc so names like Vaderstad shouldnt be pulled by our tractors.
I am pretty sure that if you were to set up a UK cultivator manufacturing company and called it 'Schnieder' it would sell better in the UK than if you called it Browns Farm Equipment. Not trying to be amusing here.. its the sad mentality of farmers who get the grants and then pull up the ladder on the other UK industries by buying John Deeres from Germany.
JCB and New Holland are equally iconic machinery manufacturers compared to the European counterparts.
We are just changing our last foreign machine from an excellent Deutz combine to a NewHolland. We bought a NH combine last year and the output and sample is extroadinary, NH all the way. All our teleporters are now JCB s/h though.

new holland combines are made abroad . the things that influences our choice are quality reliability and back up of course cost also comes into the list of things to consider
due to the mentality of british management in the past they have thought that to make things attractive they make them cheaper and then the quality fails if you take bamfords for an example they built the zweegers mowers under licence and they were made of inferior metal and the shafts would twist so people went to buy fahr mowers instead if you went back before that Bamlet were considered the best fingerbar mower when they were horse drawn when they went up to five foot cut for tractors they just extended the bar but it was too heavy for its self and just bent under its own weight .
it has been my observation that farmers have been very product loyal ford men have stayed and are now new holland massey men have stayed massey and so on myself i was a ransome plough man but they did not move with the times and did not improve their product and went bust if we buy foreign kit its for a reason our last couple of trailers have been Smyth because they are built to stand up to the work and if you look at them you will see they think how they can improve their product not cut back on the quality
some times a chap will have a bad experience with a make and change he seldom goes back if you were a ford man and had the water in the sump then there was the rubic cube gear box

 

[James W]

so now we need more of that loyalty, but not for brand... loyalty for country.
UK may only have NHFord and JCB but we dont need foreign cultivators. If after Brexit we keep buying European farm kit (and industrial equipment) then the UK could sink below the waves.
But, If all those who have been buying foreign kit (across all industries) turn back to UK manufactured equipment, then the UK could flourish. And we might get some farm payments and protection from 3rd world food exporters.

 

[bumkin]

i agree in an ideal world we should buy british but if they make it of sufficient quality when i was young i did buy british but was let down by the quality the other problem is that when we get a successful company it gets sold of to foreign buyers and as i said before we have very poor management in this country one of our tractors is a case maxxum 5130 its been without issue through its twenty years however we bought an mx 110 built in Doncaster with the same engine and the same gearbox but all the minor components had been sourced from cheaper manufacturers instead of the electric components being bosch they were eastern European and it was a regular thing to have electrical component failure as for the brakes they were a constant pain , when you live in Wales you dont want total brake failure when towing a forteen tonne trailer!
how much stuff with a british name is made abroad ?

 

[neilo]

so now we need more of that loyalty, but not for brand... loyalty for country.
UK may only have NHFord and JCB but we dont need foreign cultivators. If after Brexit we keep buying European farm kit (and industrial equipment) then the UK could sink below the waves.
But, If all those who have been buying foreign kit (across all industries) turn back to UK manufactured equipment, then the UK could flourish. And we might get some farm payments and protection from 3rd world food exporters.

All very noble, but why then did you have a Deutz combine until last year? Have you just remembered the war, or why the sudden change of heart?

 

[Kevtherev]

NH combines are manufactured in Belgium

 

[Kevtherev]

There’s lots more uk manufacturers than you think when you start looking.
Teagle of truro
Browns of Leighton buzzard
AW Trailers
Marshall trailers
Ivor Williams to name just a few

 

[PSQ]

If we do all end up in Hyde Park in 2 years time please dont take your Claas combine, or ride into town on your beautiful £180,000 Fendt, the irony would be on the richter scale.

Er, what was the last British built combine?
Are you going to drive to Hyde Park in a binder?
How about ploughs, do we have to dig out the DP8 from the nettles, or find a Ransomes?
Or min till cultivators, you could probably still find an old stock British built Simba.

- Frankly, you’re 30 years too late with your Buy British BS.

 

[ColinV6]

How many whilst doing this have an Audi, BMW or Merc sitting in the yard

 

[Kevtherev]

Last British built combines would be the Kilmarnock built MFs or ransomes combines !

 

[J 1177]

Er, what was the last British built combine?
Are you going to drive to Hyde Park in a binder?
How about ploughs, do we have to dig out the DP8 from the nettles, or find a Ransomes?
Or min till cultivators, you could probably still find an old stock British built Simba.

- Frankly, you’re 30 years too late with your Buy British BS.

Hey im still using a dp8 its part of my top quality equiptment line up. [emoji3]

 

[J 1177]

David Brown were bought out by tenneco (usa conglomorate) because lloyds bank called in their overdraft after the rolls royce engine fiasco in the early 70s. Nothing to do with british farmers.

 

[PSQ]

Hey im still using a dp8 its part of my top quality equiptment line up. [emoji3]

Sorry!

 

[J 1177]

Sorry!

[emoji2]

 

[Andrew K]

Arguably some of the finest sprayers in Europe are built over here

Knight
Chafer
Sands
Bateman
Househam
Kellands
etc etc