Tag Archives: new normal

Farm equipment becoming increasingly more expensive and will probably affect the cost of what they produce

Farm-Equipment

Important Takeaways:

  • Farmers ‘Prepare For A New Normal In 2025,’ As Prices On New And Used Equipment Become Overinflated
  • This rapid supply increase forced the erosion of the scarcity premium placed on equipment during 2020 to 2022 and is responsible for the correction of the market we see today.
  • Casey Seymour for Successful Farming dives into what’s going on in a vital sector that’s not getting enough attention for such a notable problem. Seymour discusses what this so-called “new normal” will look like in 2025 and factors that will trigger this “reset.”
  • Seymour wrote:
    • The state of the used market is top of mind for anyone involved in the farm equipment business. Dealers’ lots are as full now as they were pre-COVID. Based on the data I have collected, that equipment has seen a 40% to 60% price increase over the last six years, and in the same period, interest rates have increased a staggering 188%. The reset is happening, but what will the new normal look like?
    • As you drive from town to town, it’s easy to see that supply has caught up with demand. The manufacturer doesn’t matter; dealer lots are full and, in many cases, teeming with model-hour equipment. The cost of holding the equipment is also at record highs. Typical large ag equipment carries a price tag of $400,000 to $500,000. With floor plan interest rates at 7%, dealerships are paying $28,000 to $35,000 in interest per year per machine.
    • More dealerships than ever are motivated to sell equipment. This has generated liquidation auctions not seen since 2014 to 2020. I spoke with several auction companies and heard the same account each time: The dealers need to get machines off their books, and they plan to use every means possible. Some reports have dealers taking machines straight from the farm to the auction block.
    • The price of late-model equipment is also a problem. In 2020, a new Class 8 combine cost $450,000. Today, the same spend would get a used Class 8, with 500 hours. Finding buyers for a used $450,000 combine is growing more complicated, not because the money isn’t there but trading a low interest rate for a higher one isn’t attractive.
  • AUTHOR COMMENTARY
    • Economies around the world are staring down the barrel of everything bubble that was created post-2008, and then has been hyper-inflating since 2020, and with rates where they’ve been at it’s pushed nearly all sectors to the breaking point.
    • 2025 is going to be a watershed year, or I should say a bloodshed year, in my opinion, because a lot of signs seem to indicate this whole gravy train will be allowed to fail next year, because central banks will allow it to; which will be used to usher in this “great reset,” and enforce all these insidious agendas we know these globalists have been working to shove on everyone. The chaos that’s coming in 2025 and after will be a wild ride, and that’s putting it extremely mildly, and a collapse in the farming markets is just one aspect of it.
    • A mass consolidation of power and wealth is taking place and it’s all coming to a head, where central banks are closing in on their lifetime wish of finally becoming the buyers and lenders of last resort. No more middlemen, just them, in a land of consolidated power and wealth, of the haves and have-nots.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Social distancing signs around the world show the new normal

(Reuters) – They range from simple spray-painted circles on the ground in a Mogadishu market to bright and breezy floor stickers in a Dubai mall, which blow a kiss and urge: “Hey there beautiful, don’t forget to keep a safe distance.”

The markings that will oblige us to keep apart in busy social settings, in order to prevent transmission of the new coronavirus, are appearing on shop floors, city pavements and train or tram platforms the world over.

As people emerge from weeks of lockdown, they face an array of new measures to try and keep the virus in check and protect society’s most vulnerable.

The signs mounted so far went up at speed – but look likely to become commonplace and could be in use for years.

Dots on the ground, lines, squares within squares, love hearts and smiley faces are being used around the world. The markings need to be impactful enough to be adhered to, but also, ideally, to reassure people without making them feel cattle-driven.

“Anywhere where there are graphics at the moment, it is because people have had to react super quick and put something in place – speed has been of the essence. We are now at the point where there is a bit of breathing space,” said Chris Girling, Head of Wayfinding at CCD Design & Ergonomics in London.

We have a hotchpotch of styles, colours, terminology, scale and placement strategies, he notes. “This means every single time a member of the public enters a different space they are having to relearn the rules.”

There is a balance to be found, he said. “People want to feel safe, reassured and at ease. If you can do that, they are in turn going to be more likely to shop, feel relaxed and return. The message needs to be clear and consistent … and absorbed.”

A social distancing marker as preventive measure against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is seen inside a pharmacy store in downtown Nairobi, Kenya May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

PLEASE

Levels of politeness vary in the places where retailers, city and transport authorities have been able to afford to print special signs.

“For your safety please stand 2 meters from other people,” reads a floor sign in a Shell petrol garage in Britain.

“Please practice social distancing,” reads another alongside footprints in Santa Monica, California.

“Stand here” is written in English on a red circle floor sign in a grocery shop in Beirut.

“If we are using words like ‘stop’ and ‘go’ and more abrupt language, then that is more associated with hazard and prohibitive signage. This (COVID-19) is a very different type of situation and one that people have never experienced before, so it warrants a different tone of voice,” said Girling.

“It is definitely worth trying a more friendly and inventive touch with how you talk to your customers or the general public as they are likely to be more receptive… there is even a bit of space for humour.”

Footprints have proved popular so far, in signs from Bury in Britain to Abidjan in Ivory Coast, but as Girling points out, the best sign systems would also encourage linear movement and give a visual understanding of direction.

Asked how he would design a social distancing system, he suggested a line of tape to show a pathway, which changes color every two meters.

“The instinct to follow a line from childhood naturally stays the same as we become adults, and you subconsciously pick up on these visual cues as you walk around environments.”

Signs related to COVID-19 should also ideally have their own distinctive color, which will become instantly recognizable.

(Reporting by Reuters photographers worldwide; Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Face masks may be ‘new normal’ in post-virus life as U.S. prepares gradual reopening

By Maria Caspani and Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States approached 31,000 on Wednesday as governors began cautiously preparing Americans for a post-virus life that would likely include public face coverings as the “new normal.”

The governors of Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania each issued orders or recommendations that residents wear face masks as they emerge from isolation in the coming weeks.

“If you are going to be in public and you cannot maintain social distancing, then have a mask, and put that mask on,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.

Similar orders were imposed in New Jersey and Los Angeles last week and face coverings were recommended by Kansas Governor Laura Kelly on Tuesday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has said residents across the nation’s most-populous state would likely be wearing masks in public for some time to come.

“We are going to be getting back to normal; it will be a new normal,” Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said, echoing a phrase used by at least two of his fellow governors in recent days.

U.S. Midwest governors were also making plans together to restart their economies, said Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

In Michigan, hundreds of cars flooded the streets around the state Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday to protest Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders, some of the strictest in the country.

Some protesters, in the demonstration organized by conservative and pro-President Donald Trump groups, left their cars to gather on the lawn in front of the Capitol building, many of them not wearing masks or practicing social distancing.

TOLL ON HEALTHCARE STAFF

As of Wednesday night, 30,885 people in the United States had died of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a Reuters tally.

That includes more than 4,000 deaths newly attributed to the disease in New York City after health officials revised their counting methods to include “probable,” but unconfirmed, cases.

Healthcare workers have faced unique health threats while working on the front lines trying to tackle the pandemic.

Reuters has identified more than 50 nurses, doctors and medical technicians who have died after being diagnosed with COVID-19 or showing symptoms of it. At least 16 were in New York state.

“The emergency room is like a war zone,” said Raj Aya, whose wife, Madhvi Aya – a physician’s assistant in Brooklyn – was one of the healthcare workers who died in New York.

As the outbreak begins to slow, political leaders have bickered over how and when to begin the process of unwinding unprecedented lockdowns that have damaged the economy and largely confined Americans to their homes.

Washington state Governor Jay Inslee told an afternoon news conference the largest obstacle to a return to normalcy was a shortage of coronavirus tests.

“We simply haven’t had enough test kits – they simply do not exist anywhere in the United States right now,” Inslee said, adding the state had purchased about a million swabs, along with vials and test medium but they were just starting to arrive.

At his daily White House briefing hours later, Trump boasted that the United States had “the most expansive testing system anywhere in the world”. But, he said, testing was a problem for the states and not the federal government.

“We can’t be thinking about a Walmart parking lot,” where some testing is being done, but the states and cities should do that, he said.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a $30 billion plan to vastly increase nationwide testing for the coronavirus.

‘ALMOST IN FREE FALL’

Trump, citing data suggesting the peak of new infections had passed, said he would announce guidelines on Thursday for reopening the economy.

The sweeping closures of businesses have left millions of Americans unemployed and store owners struggling to pay rent.

Government data released on Wednesday showed that retail sales dropped by 8.7% in March, the biggest decline since tracking began in 1992. Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

In addition, output at U.S. factories declined by the most since 1946 as the pandemic fractured supply chains.

“The economy is almost in free fall,” said Sung Won Sohn, a business economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The United States, with the world’s third-largest population, has now suffered the greatest number of reported fatalities from the coronavirus, ahead of Italy and Spain.

Globally, the number of infections has crossed the 2 million mark and over 136,000 people have died, a Reuters tally shows.

The pathogen emerged last year in China.

Trump said on Wednesday his government was trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing “needs to come clean” on what they know. The official death toll released by the Chinese government stands at about 3,600.

The source of the virus remains a mystery. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicated the coronavirus likely occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but there was no certainty either way.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Lucia Mutikani, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Maria Caspani, Lisa Shumaker, Gabriella Borter, Peter Szekely, Kristina Cooke, Jessica Resnick-Ault, Sharon Bernstein, Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman, Peter Cooney and Himani Sarkar)