AGRICULTURE

Farm Tractor Sales Remain in a Slump: Fewer farmers are plowing the fields with new tractors this spring. And the people who make and sell farm machinery don’t expect a big recovery soon. Fewer than 94,000 tractors were sold in the United States in 1991. It was the first time sales fell below 100,000 since at least 1969, when the Equipment Manufacturers Institute, a trade group, started keeping such records. Sales for the first two months of 1992 are estimated to be up just 2.6%. For the rest of the year, most analysts expect sales will be flat or will decline, says Mike A. Singer, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects a 7% decline in the number of tractors and combines sold this year. That’s a far cry from the 1970s, when investment tax breaks and the fear of inflation led farmers to increase spending on farm equipment from about $4 billion a year in the 1960s to a peak of $14 billion in 1979. Sales began to fall in the 1980s, when borrowing costs soared at the same time farmland values collapsed and farmers struggled under the weight of huge debts and falling crop prices.