Having lived in the Mississippi Delta for a majority of my life where farming "king" cotton, 'beans, corn, rice, milo, winter wheat, IS LIFE by itself...
driving down the Delta highways & back roads.... when you see equipment in the field the vast majority (50 h.p. and up) is Case/International with JD in a close second.
Kubota, JD, Case/Int, MF make up the small tractor line up on the home/hobby/hunting camp usage (50 H.P. and below).
As for AGCO..... there is ONLY one dealer I am aware of there in the Delta that has been in the same location, just south of Carey, MS for as long as I have been alive (32 years). It's burned to ground twice, nearly blown away by a tornado, gone bankrupt several times because there is just no business, and probably changed hands more times than you can count. To the best of my knowledge it is still there. In the '80s there were several Glenear combines lurking around but they have since been replaced by
RED and
GREEN and even a few
YELLOW machines. CLAAS Commanders even made a breif stint. No one seemed to like those because repair manuals were only availabe written in German and parts were hard to come by.
On a personal note......... I never saw a John Deere that
COULD NOT BE OUT-DONE by an
International. The absolute, toughest tractor I ever operated was a '70s 1066 Turbo IH with duals and a bulldozer blade. With that turbo spooled up, there was not a tree (or it's root system) that was safe from that machine. I must report (sadly) that it died 3-5 years ago while running a P.T.O. driven irrigation well. Late one afternoon, it slung a rod through the block hitting the fuel & oil filters (can't remember witch) caught fire, and burned to the ground. Though it cannot be confirmed because the hour meter broke several years ago and never fixed, it is believed to have had between 7000 and 10,000 operating hours at the time of the fire with out ever having one engine overhaul. NEVER SAW a JD that could even come remotely close.
wned:
