A Farming Forum census of combine harvesters in daily use has produced a picture sharply at odds with the machines that dominate manufacturer marketing, with contributors reporting working combines of 20, 30 and nearly 40 years old cutting commercially significant acreages.
By TFF News | 2 September 2026 | Agricultural machinery
The conversation began when a contributor asked what age of combine farms were actually running, noting that publicity tends to revolve around newer machines. He offered his own as a starting point: a John Deere 9780i Hillmaster on its 20th harvest, cutting around 1,000 acres a year. What followed was an unusually direct account of the working machinery base on British farms, and of why the replacement cycle has stalled.
The conversation attracted 173 visible contributions, 10,583 views and 484 reactions between 26 July and 5 August. That equates to an average of 2.8 reactions per contribution. It is a self-selecting sample of farmers who chose to answer a question about older machinery, not a representative survey of the UK combine fleet.
What is actually in the shed
Machine age and longevity was the dominant theme, appearing in 64 contributions. The declared machines included a 1986 New Holland 8040, a 1987 Claas Dominator 68 still working on its original farm, a 1989 John Deere 1055, a 1991 New Holland TF44, a 1994 Massey Ferguson-era Mega 204 bought new by the contributor’s father, and numerous machines from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Workloads varied from around 50 acres a year to well over 1,500. Several contributors reported 20-year-old machines still cutting 700 to 1,000 acres annually. One contributor summarised the durability question with a rule of thumb: “I always reckon an hour on a combine is like two on a tractor.”
The contributor who started the conversation drew the conclusion the trade will find most pointed: “If you read the farming press you would believe people change their combines a lot more frequently than actually appears to be the case.” He attributed the gap to price, saying machines “have become so expensive relative to farm outputs, that farmers are reluctant to upgrade”.
The registration data supports the picture
Replacement cost drew 13 contributions, and the forum arithmetic aligns with the official record. One contributor set out the change directly, saying a five-walker machine costing about £110,000 in 2013 “is now over £250k and the annual payments are the total cost to change previously”.
Agricultural Engineers Association figures put UK combine harvester orders at 280 units in the 2024/25 seasonal year, down 30% on the 400 recorded the year before. AEA economist Stephen Howarth told Farmers Weekly that the 2024-25 combine season was probably the worst since the war and certainly the worst in the association’s records. Tractor registrations tell the same story, falling below 9,000 units in 2025, the lowest since records began in 1964.
The AEA attributes the slowdown to tight arable cash flow, weak confidence, changes to inheritance tax relief and uncertainty over future support, and reports replacement cycles stretching from around five years to seven or eight. Forum contributors described the same pressure at dealership level. One reported that “a local dealership that usually does 15-18 per year and 25 on a really good year has sold 4 combines this year!” That figure is one contributor’s account of a single unnamed dealership and was not independently verified.
Maintenance has become the alternative to replacement
Maintenance and rebuilding was the second most common theme, at 31 contributions, and it was where the conversation turned practical. Contributors described out-of-season programmes, shelves of spare bearings and belts, and a willingness to rebuild rather than trade.
One contributor put the economics plainly: “That out of season work pays off massively tho,you can make an old machine as reliable as a new one if you keep at it”. Another, running a machine on 7,200 hours, said “The 2388 is infinitely rebuildable, you don’t need to replace it, they are built to last.” A third quantified preventative work: “Changing a £ 30 bearing in winter can save 100 times its cost in damaged shafts and lost time”.
That behaviour has a direct commercial consequence. Demand is shifting from whole machines toward parts availability, service capacity and the simplicity that makes older machines economic to maintain. Several contributors specifically praised older models for using standard bearings and belts that could be sourced without a dealer visit.
Falling acreages compound the problem
Acreage and workload appeared in 27 contributions, and a recurring pattern was combinable area shrinking beneath machines already paid for. Contributors attributed reductions to environmental scheme agreements, with several reporting cuts of a third to a half in the area they now cut. One described dropping from around 460 acres to 215, another from 250 acres to under 100 for a second consecutive year.
The commercial logic follows: a farm whose cutting area has halved has weaker justification for replacement than it had five years ago, and a longer window in which the existing machine is adequate.
A caution on reading the census
One contributor made an important methodological point that cuts against the conversation’s own headline. Expressing average age per machine rather than per acre cut overstates the fleet’s age, because the newest and highest-output machines cut a disproportionate share of the national area. As he put it, weighting by acres “you would end up back with the farming press perception”.
Both things are true at once. A large share of the UK harvest is cut by a small number of recent, high-capacity machines, while a large share of the machines themselves are old, well maintained and doing modest acreages. The trade sells into both markets, and they are moving in different directions.
The question for the trade
Structured classification found 132 neutral contributions (76.3%), 21 negative (12.1%) and 20 positive (11.6%). Positive contributions attracted 5.65 reactions on average, against 2.49 for neutral and 2.0 for negative, with the strongest agreement going to accounts of well-maintained older machines rather than to complaints. These measures describe tone within this conversation only.
The trade question is not whether farmers want new combines. It is what a manufacturer or dealer sells to a farm whose machine is 20 years old, whose cutting area is falling, and whose owner has demonstrated he can rebuild rather than replace. One contributor framed the long-term risk for the sector directly, observing that “25 year ago our 2388 was a flagship machine. Now I doubt anyone buys a new combine that small any more.” He went on to ask whether today’s high-capacity machines will still be viable to run at 25 years old, when they reach the farms that currently buy two-decade-old combines. If they are not, the second-hand ladder that keeps smaller farms harvesting has a missing rung.
Read the source conversation and analysis
Read the full conversation on The Farming Forum here.
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