We know your equipment customers, especially the rural lifestyler types, like to match tractor and implement colors around their homesteads and are often willing to pay a premium for such aesthetics. But before you beg your major-line suppliers to come with a true green, red or blue electric tractor for your rural lifestyle customers, consider the Aug. 26-27, 2023 Wall Street Journal article by Holman Jenkins Jr.

Among many other points in his opinion piece on the “stupidity” of EV policies in the automotive world, Jenkins shared how the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, admitted that Ford “needed more profits from gas-powered cars to cover losses from electric vehicles.”

This isn’t to say that electric tractors don’t have a place on American acreages, because they do. And a lot of consumers and first-time hobbyists will gladly open their wallets wide for small electric-powered tractors to handle their limited-hour chores. To date, this demand is being satisfied through independents like Monarch Tractor and Solectrac. Perhaps that’s where it should stay, with the specialists, who are building infrastructures specific for this product.

Some farm equipment dealers and manufacturers might argue neither should yield their turf to what could be a competing distribution model. But the American farm equipment industry also doesn’t need the majors distracted at a time when making affordable autonomous and other high-tech equipment should be the No. 1 priority.

With electric vehicles attracting what is portrayed as an endless demand, not to mention the appetite of the investor community, the not-so-far-away farm equipment business might be careful what it wishes for.

History shows what can happen when a world-class ag equipment manufacturer like International Harvester becomes enthralled with consumer products. That trend, along with poor labor contracts, bankrupted an industry icon. And IH wasn't the only mainline farm equipment manufacturer who went belly up after forgetting the core business that "made it a major."

What do you think? Do you want your major-line in, or out, on the small electric tractor segment?