UK registrations of new agricultural tractors (over 50hp) in December 2017 reached 1,360 units. This is well over double the number registered in the same month of 2016, mainly due to a large number of machines being pre-registered in advance on the introduction of new regulations on 1 January 2018. But Stephen Howarth, agricultural economist at the Agricultural Engineers Association says it is likely that this "will lead to some suppression of the number of registrations in the early months of 2018".

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The big rise in December brought the total number of tractors registered in 2017 to 12,033, 13% more than in 2016. This is only the second rise in the number of registrations in nine years and the first since 2011. Even without the additional pre-registrations, last year’s total would still have been higher than previous year, although the rate of increase would have been lower. Further details of the 2017 registrations will be published in due course.

As has been apparent all year, most of the growth in tractor registrations during 2017 came in the middle of the power range, with more than two-thirds of the additional machines being between 140 and 200hp. There was also further growth in the high-power end of the market but only a modest increase for lower-powered machines, between 50 and 140hp. There was good growth in the number of tractors below 50hp (not included in the total figure above or the regional analysis below), though, where registrations were up 22%, at 1,735.

Continuing the historic trend, the average power of tractors over 50hp registered during 2017 rose to 162.2hp, up from 158.3hp in 2016. The total power sold was just over 2 million hp, for the first time since 2012, when machines below 50hp are included.

Figures on the regional distribution of tractor registrations show fairly consistent growth across most of the English regions. With the exception of the small Home Counties/London and North East regions, all parts of England saw increases of between 12% and 22%, with no obvious bias towards livestock or arable regions. Outside England it was a more mixed picture, however, with growth in Scotland, albeit slower than in England at 10%, little change in Northern Ireland and a small decline in Welsh registrations. This may reflect the importance of grazing livestock farming in these parts of the UK and the greater uncertainty faced by this sector after Brexit, particularly for sheep farmers.