Last updated: June 2026. A working farmer’s walk through farm machinery economics in 2026: new vs used vs contractor, the depreciation that nobody wants to look at, fuel and labour as a slice of running cost, the AIA and full expensing rules that make the kit cheaper after tax, the cost-per-hour number that every fleet decision should pass, and the practical replacement strategy I’d actually follow if I were starting the fleet over. General information, not tax advice. See the fleet-review checklist at the end for the six steps to take before the next replacement.
The first conversation I had after the wheat went into the rotation two years ago was with the accountant, and the first conversation after that was with the dealer. I had been used to running a salad and vegetable kit list (tractors, sprayer, rotavator, ridger, pack-house gear) for twenty-one years, and the addition of a combine to the equation was the moment I stopped pretending I understood farm machinery economics and started treating it as the second-largest cost on the farm, after labour, that it actually is. Twenty-three years on this holding and a decision the missus and I sat down at the kitchen table in the December evenings and reasoned out from the cost-per-hour back, not from the dealer brochure forward.
This is what I learnt going through that, and what I would actually do if I were starting the fleet review over. It is written for a working farmer running a small or medium UK holding, the holding where every piece of kit has to earn its keep and the wrong purchase locks up working capital for years.
The honest cost of running farm machinery in 2026
The Defra Farm Business Survey numbers, year after year, put machinery costs (depreciation, fuel, repairs, contracting hire-in) at roughly 18 to 25 per cent of farm output across the typical UK arable and mixed holdings.[1] On a salad and veg holding the proportion is lower (because labour is much higher) but the absolute machinery spend per acre is similar because the same kit is needed.
The single most useful framing I have come across is that machinery costs split into two camps, and growing farms confuse the two at their peril.
Capital costs are the costs of owning the machine: the purchase price, the depreciation, the interest on the financing if any, the insurance, the secure storage. They run whether or not the machine moves an inch in a season.
Running costs are the costs of using the machine: fuel, AdBlue, oil, filters, wearing parts, tyres, operator labour, repair and servicing time. They scale with hours used.
A combine sat in the shed costs you depreciation and insurance whether it works 50 hours or 250 hours. Adding hours doesn’t make the depreciation worse in a meaningful way (it’s mostly time-based on a working farm asset) but it spreads the same fixed cost over more output. A combine doing 100 hours a season costs roughly twice as much per hour as the same combine doing 200 hours, because the depreciation and insurance are spread across fewer hours.
That single fact drives most of the rational arguments for contracting, machinery rings and shared kit on smaller holdings.
What machines really cost: capital and depreciation
The list price of a new 200 to 250 hp combine in 2026 sits at £350,000 to £550,000 depending on header width, threshing configuration and brand. A used 5-year-old combine of the same spec runs £140,000 to £240,000. A used 10-year-old combine runs £55,000 to £100,000 depending on condition and hours.[2] The same shape applies to most major farm capital purchases: tractors, telehandlers, sprayers, balers, drills. New is double the used five-year-old price; used five-year-old is roughly double the used ten-year-old price.
Depreciation on a working farm asset typically runs on a “diminishing balance” pattern: heavier in the first three to five years, then flattening. A rule-of-thumb working calculation many accountants use is 25 per cent reducing balance per year for the first three years (so 25 per cent of remaining value, year on year), then 15 per cent reducing balance after year four.[3] AHDB and HSBC Agriculture published a working machinery depreciation guide in 2022 that puts the same numbers in a slightly different form.[4]
What that means in practice on a £400,000 new combine is roughly this:
Year 0: £400,000 Year 1: £300,000 (£100,000 depreciation) Year 2: £225,000 (£75,000 depreciation) Year 3: £169,000 (£56,000 depreciation) Year 4: £143,000 (£26,000 depreciation) Year 5: £122,000 (£21,000 depreciation)
So in the first five years you’ve lost £278,000 of value. On a combine doing 200 hours a season, that’s £278 per hour of depreciation alone, before fuel, before parts, before the operator’s wages. Add £40/hour of fuel, £20/hour of parts and consumables, £25/hour of operator labour, £15/hour insurance and storage allocation. The honest cost per hour of running your own brand-new combine for the first five years is roughly £350 to £400 per hour at 200 hours per season. At 100 hours per season it is closer to £600 per hour because the fixed costs aren’t being spread.
The contractor will charge you £150 to £220 per acre for combining, depending on crop, distance and season. Convert that to per hour at a working combine throughput of 5 to 8 acres per hour and the contractor rate is roughly £20 to £40 per acre at the headline rate, or £100 to £250 per hour against the combine’s productivity. On most small holdings, the contractor is cheaper by a wide margin once depreciation and idle hours are honestly counted.
The cost-per-hour test every machine should pass
The single calculation every machine purchase should pass before any signature on a financing deal is the cost-per-hour test. The formula is straightforward.
Cost-per-hour = (annual depreciation + annual interest + annual insurance + annual storage allocation) ÷ annual operating hours + (fuel + AdBlue + oil) per hour + (parts and consumables) per hour + (operator wages, fully loaded) per hour
The number that comes out is what every hour of that machine actually costs the farm. Compare it to what a contractor would charge per hour for the same work, accounting for travel time and minimum charges. If the contractor is cheaper at your honest annual hours, the right answer is the contractor, unless there is a specific operational reason (timing, availability, training value) for owning.
This is the calculation that every dealer hates and every accountant insists on. The dealer’s argument will always be that the asset has residual value and so depreciation is overstated. The honest answer is that residual value is recovered only on disposal, and most working farms hold their kit five to ten years and disposal happens only when the asset is replaced, at which point the depreciation has been almost fully absorbed.
The Defra Farm Business Survey publishes the average annual hours various machines work on the typical British farm. The numbers are sobering: the average UK farm tractor works 300 to 600 hours a year. The average UK farm combine works 80 to 150 hours a year. The average UK farm baler works 40 to 80 hours.[1] Those numbers are the denominator in the cost-per-hour calculation, and they are why so many smaller holdings end up either contracting out or buying second-hand.
New, used or contract: the three-way choice
The default question for every major capital purchase on a working farm should be the three-way comparison: new, used or contract. The factors that move the answer one way or the other:
Annual hours. The single biggest variable. Above 400 to 500 hours a year, owning often makes sense. Below 150 hours a year, contracting almost always makes sense. The middle is genuinely ambiguous.
Timing and availability. If you need the machine on a specific day (sprayer in a perfect spray window, combine on the one dry afternoon of August), owning is the only way to guarantee it. Contractors are working for many farms and can’t be in two places at once. This is the strongest pro-ownership argument for sprayers and the marginal-but-real argument for combines.
Skill development and apprenticeship. Owning kit develops the operator. Contracting hires somebody else’s operator. If you have an apprentice or a young permanent staff member learning the trade, owning matters. We talk about that in our UK Farm Apprenticeships and Labour 2026 guide.
Tax position. Capital allowances change the after-tax cost of owning. The Annual Investment Allowance is £1 million a year for most farms, and full expensing of new qualifying plant and machinery is permanent for companies.[5] On a sole-trader or partnership farm the AIA covers most capital purchases up to £1 million per year in full. After tax, the £400,000 combine costs the farm £400,000 minus £400,000 × marginal tax rate (20 per cent for basic rate, 40 per cent for higher rate, or 25 per cent corporation tax for a company), so the after-tax cost on a higher-rate partnership farm is around £240,000. This shifts the cost-per-hour comparison meaningfully. Discussed in more detail in our UK Farm Tax 2026: Beyond IHT guide.
Resale market. Some brands hold value better than others. John Deere, Fendt, and Class generally hold value better than the smaller-volume brands. The premium you pay new is recovered partially on resale. Some specialist kit (cabbage planters, vegetable lifters) has almost no resale market and depreciates to scrap.
Risk appetite and the working capital position. A £400,000 capital purchase ties up working capital that could fund a season’s inputs or pay down an overdraft. The opportunity cost is real and is usually undercosted in the dealer brochure.
Fuel, AdBlue and the running-cost line
Fuel is the largest single running cost on a working farm machine. The 2026 red diesel price has been running £0.70 to £0.85 per litre depending on supplier and bulk discount.[6] AdBlue is roughly £0.45 to £0.60 per litre and a modern Tier 5 / Stage V tractor uses AdBlue at roughly 3 to 6 per cent of diesel consumption.
A modern 200 hp tractor working hard burns 25 to 35 litres of red diesel per hour. A 250 hp combine harvester burns 50 to 70 litres per hour. A self-propelled sprayer burns 8 to 14 litres per hour. The fuel cost alone on a hard-working combine is £40 to £55 per hour at current prices.
The political fact every working farmer holds in their head is that red diesel is a tax expenditure (rebated fuel) and the rebate has been under review since 2021. Defra and HMT removed the red diesel entitlement for most non-agricultural uses in 2022; agricultural use was retained.[7] Whether it stays retained indefinitely depends on Treasury priorities, but the direction of travel on diesel taxation as a whole, with the move to electric vehicles in the road sector, is upwards. Sensible planning assumes a real-terms fuel cost rise over the next rotation cycle, not a fall.
AdBlue dosing is a real cost the dealer rarely flags up front. A modern combine working hard uses 2 to 5 litres of AdBlue per hour. On a 200-hour season that’s £400 to £600 of AdBlue. Small numbers in isolation, real at the end of the year.
Repairs, consumables and the realistic service budget
The service budget is the line most working farms get wrong because dealer schedules are written for warranty conditions on a freshly-built machine. Real-world repairs and consumables on a working farm machine track these benchmarks (AHDB and dealer service data are working sources):
Tractor: £8 to £14 per hour at the average UK working condition. Higher on heavy cultivation. Lower on transport and light field work.
Combine: £18 to £30 per hour. Concaves, sieves, knife sections, belts, rotor bars. The threshing parts are surprisingly expensive and wear with hours.
Sprayer: £6 to £12 per hour. Nozzles, filters, pump seals, the boom hardware. Calibration and accuracy are worth more than the parts.
Telehandler: £4 to £8 per hour. Tyres are the single biggest expense.
Plough: £20 to £40 per hour of working. Wearing metal is the cost.
Drill: £6 to £12 per hour. Coulter wear, distribution system, seed metering.
The service plan a dealer sells you is a useful starting point. The realistic full-service cost (including the wearing parts and operator time) is twice the dealer service plan in most cases.
Buying a five-year-old machine instead of new transfers the depreciation pain to the previous owner, but transfers the service-cost peak to you. Years 5 to 10 on most farm kit are when major service items (transmissions, hydraulics, electronics) start to need attention. The cost-per-hour calculation has to count the higher repair-cost-per-hour of older kit, not just the lower depreciation-per-hour.
Tax, capital allowances and the after-tax cost
The Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) is the headline capital-allowances relief for unincorporated farms. It is set at £1 million per year and covers most plant and machinery, including farm tractors, combines, sprayers, drills and pack-house equipment.[5] An expenditure within AIA is 100 per cent deductible against profits in the year of expenditure.
For incorporated farms (companies), full expensing on new plant and machinery is the equivalent relief. Full expensing was made permanent in the 2023 Autumn Statement and continues in 2026.[8] It does not apply to second-hand purchases (which sit under writing-down allowances).
The structural effect is significant. A higher-rate sole-trader farm buying a £200,000 new sprayer with AIA available reduces taxable profit by £200,000 in the year, saving £80,000 of income tax and Class 4 NICs at the higher-rate marginal combination. The after-tax cost of the sprayer is around £120,000.
The catch is that the AIA / full expensing only delivers a benefit if you have profit to deduct it against. In a loss-making year there is no benefit, and the relief sits on the books as an unused balancing item. Capital purchases timed to profitable years are tax-efficient; capital purchases timed to loss-making years are not.
The second catch is that depreciation in management accounts (the cost-per-hour calculation) is distinct from capital allowances in tax accounts. The cash position and the tax position are not the same. Don’t confuse them in the kitchen-table calculation.
Talk to the accountant before the dealer.
Financing: HP, finance lease, operating lease, balloon payments
The dealer’s finance plan will offer one of three structures, sometimes all three on the same machine.
Hire purchase (HP). You pay a deposit, then monthly instalments, and own the machine at the end. The interest is allowable; the capital element of the payments reduces a balance sheet liability. This is the working norm for most farm machinery on UK holdings. Interest rates in 2026 have settled around the 7 to 9 per cent range depending on credit and term.
Finance lease. You don’t own the machine; the finance company does. You pay rentals for the lease term and have a secondary period option to keep using the machine at a peppercorn rent. The rentals are deductible against profits. This is sometimes used by farms wanting to avoid putting the asset on the balance sheet.
Operating lease (contract hire). Pure rental. The lessor takes the residual-value risk. Payments are deductible against profit. The machine goes back at the end of the term in a defined condition.
Balloon payment. Most modern farm finance deals include a balloon (a large final lump-sum payment at the end of the term, typically 30 to 50 per cent of the original price). The balloon brings the monthly payments down but commits the farm to either paying the balloon, refinancing it, or part-exchanging the machine for a new one at the end of the term. The hidden risk is that the balloon assumes a residual value the machine may or may not actually have when the term ends; if the resale market has softened, you can be left short.
The interest rate on the finance is the obvious thing to negotiate. The balloon assumption, the term length, the depreciation projection and the part-exchange terms are the less obvious things, and they matter more for the long-run cost of the deal than the headline interest rate.
Contracting in, contracting out and machinery rings
Machinery rings and contracting arrangements are increasingly the rational answer for capital-intensive seasonal kit on smaller holdings. The Scottish Machinery Ring model (Ringlink, Borders Machinery Ring, RHASS) and the English equivalents (smaller and less formal) work as a pooled labour and machinery brokerage that connects farms with kit to spare and farms with kit shortfalls.[9]
The cost economics are simple. A small holding doing 80 hours of combine work a year cannot justify owning a £400,000 combine. The contractor doing the same combining for 12 farms across the rotation can. Splitting the £278/hour first-five-year combine depreciation across 12 farms instead of one drops the per-farm-hour cost dramatically.
The arguments against contracting:
You can’t always get the combine on the day you want it. If the weather window is one day and the contractor is on another farm, you wait. On a small holding this is a real cost, particularly on weather-sensitive crops.
You don’t develop the skill in-house. If your aim is to train an apprentice or a young family member, contracting that work out gives the training to someone else’s operation.
The contractor’s standards are not your standards. Combining at speed on a crop you wanted handled carefully costs you in grain losses, sieve losses and field-edge waste.
The pragmatic middle ground is to own the kit you use every week (tractor, sprayer, telehandler) and contract the kit you use a handful of weeks a year (combine, baler, mole-drainer, hedge trimmer where seasonal). The line between the two depends on holding size, crop mix and skill base. A 200 to 300-hectare arable holding in the South or East of England, in 2026, probably owns the sprayer and the telehandler and contracts the combine. A 500-hectare arable holding probably owns both. A 100-hectare holding probably contracts both.
Sharing kit: the partnership model
The third option, between ownership and contracting, is shared ownership with one or two neighbours. Three farms with a combined 600 hectares of cereals can share a combine economically. The legal structure (partnership, company or simple shared-ownership agreement with clear written terms) matters. The operational structure (who drives, who maintains, who insures, who orders the parts, who has the storage shed) matters more.
The arguments for shared kit:
Capital cost per farm is one third or one quarter.
Resale and replacement cycles can be managed jointly.
Operator skill is shared across the partnership.
The arguments against:
Timing conflicts (everyone wants the combine on the same dry day in August).
Disagreements over maintenance standards.
Trust. Three farms have to trust each other for years. Shared kit is the cheapest economic arrangement and the most demanding relationship arrangement.
The partnerships that work tend to be families or close neighbours with long history. The partnerships that don’t tend to be opportunistic arrangements between strangers. A written agreement, a working maintenance schedule, a shared insurance policy and a clear scheduling protocol are the working bones of a successful shared-kit partnership.
A working fleet for a 200-hectare mixed holding
A worked example for a 200-hectare mixed holding (half salad and veg, half arable) in 2026:
Two tractors (one 150 hp, one 110 hp). Owned. Annual hours roughly 800 and 500.
One self-propelled sprayer (24 m boom, 3,000 L tank). Owned. Annual hours roughly 200.
One telehandler. Owned. Annual hours roughly 600.
One field-veg drill. Owned. Annual hours roughly 80, but operationally critical at planting.
One combine harvester. Contracted in. Annual hours required roughly 60 to 80.
One round baler. Contracted in for straw.
One hedge trimmer. Contracted in.
One pack-house line (washer, grader, packing belts). Owned. Operational year-round.
Field cultivations (ploughing, subsoiling, power-harrow). The 150 hp tractor with owned implements does most. Contracted in for the few hectares of heavy primary tillage in autumn.
The capital tied up in the owned fleet (tractors, sprayer, telehandler, drill, pack-house gear) runs roughly £600,000 to £900,000 of new-equivalent value depending on age and spec. The annual depreciation on that fleet (using 18 to 22 per cent overall on a working calculation that mixes new and older kit) runs £100,000 to £180,000 a year. Add £35,000 to £45,000 of running costs (fuel, parts, consumables, operator labour allocation) and the total machinery line on the farm accounts is £135,000 to £225,000 a year, or £675 to £1,125 per hectare.
The Defra Farm Business Survey UK averages for mixed and arable holdings put machinery costs at roughly £450 to £750 per hectare across the typical British farm.[1] Our example sits above that average because the salad and veg side requires more specialist kit than a pure arable holding of the same size.
The replacement cycle: when to replace
The classic “trade in every five years” cycle is a dealer-driven default. The cost-per-hour analysis suggests a more nuanced reality.
Tractors in heavy use (500+ hours a year): replace at year 7 to 10 or 6,000 to 8,000 hours. The first major engine and transmission service-cost peaks land in years 8 to 10.
Sprayers: replace at year 8 to 12 or 2,500 to 3,500 hours. Booms and pumps are the major service items.
Telehandlers: replace at year 8 to 10. Tyres and wear plates are the consumable. The lifting hardware is mostly bulletproof.
Combines: contractor’s discussion. If you own one, replace at 6 to 9 years or 1,500 to 2,500 hours, depending on the cost-per-hour curve.
Drills: replace at year 10 to 15. Modern drills hold value reasonably well if maintained.
Pack-house gear: replace each line component on its own cycle. Washers and graders last 15 to 25 years with care. Belts and motors are 5 to 10-year items.
The replacement timing should be set by the cost-per-hour curve, not by the calendar. When repair costs start to climb steeply (rule of thumb: when annual repair cost exceeds 5 to 8 per cent of replacement value), the marginal economics of replacement tip towards new. Before that point, owning the older machine and accepting moderate downtime is the lower-cost answer.
The precision-agriculture and electronics overlay
Modern farm machinery comes loaded with electronics, GPS, telematics, ISOBUS, variable-rate application and field data systems. The headline benefit is real (input savings, operator-aid systems, data trail for audit and SFI compliance) and is covered in more detail in our UK Precision Agriculture 2026 guide.
The hidden cost is real too. Electronics fail more frequently than mechanics. A failed wheel sensor or a control module is a dealer-only repair, and the dealer charges £80 to £160 an hour for diagnostic labour. The right-to-repair conversation, with John Deere and the FTC at its centre, is a working issue for UK farmers as much as US farmers, with the same lock-out of independent workshops on the most heavily electronics-dependent kit.[10]
The pragmatic answer is to buy the level of electronics you’ll actually use, refuse the upsell on the level you won’t, and budget for higher repair downtime on electronics-heavy kit than on mechanically simpler equivalents.
A six-step fleet-review checklist
Six things to do before the next replacement.
Pull the cost-per-hour calculation for every major machine. Last 12 months’ hours, depreciation, fuel, parts, operator allocation. One spreadsheet.
For every machine doing under 200 hours a year, ask the question: contractor or shared kit? Get a contractor quote and a shared-kit feasibility conversation with two neighbours.
Talk to the accountant about the year’s expected profit and the AIA / full-expensing position before committing to any capital purchase. The after-tax cost is the cost that matters.
Get three dealer quotes on any major capital purchase. The headline price varies less than the financing terms, the part-exchange allowance and the balloon assumption. The total cost over the term can vary by 15 to 25 per cent between dealers.
Walk the existing fleet with a checklist: hours, service history, working order, expected replacement date. Identify the kit that has 12 to 24 months left before the cost-per-hour curve tips.
Set a written 5-year fleet replacement plan. Update it every January after the previous year’s hours and costs are in. The plan is the discipline that stops opportunistic dealer purchases derailing the long-term cost picture.
Where this is heading
Three forces will shape farm machinery economics over the next five years.
The first is the diesel transition. Heavy farm machinery will not switch to battery-electric on the timeframe of the next replacement cycle, because the energy density is wrong for the duty cycle. Hybrid and biofuel-tolerant engines are real options coming through. Hydrogen for the heaviest kit is at pilot stage. The next decade of farm tractors and combines will still be diesel-burning kit, with the cost trajectory of diesel and AdBlue as the dominant uncertainty.
The second is consolidation in the dealer network. The CNH and AGCO dealer footprints have consolidated heavily over the last decade; some smaller brands are visibly under pressure. The dealer support network matters as much as the machine itself, and a brand without a dealer within 60 miles is a hard brand to own.
The third is automation and autonomy. Autonomous tractors and harvest robots are real and commercially available in some classes (small autonomous weeders, robotic salad cutters) in 2026 and will move up the size and value scale through the rest of the decade.[11] The economics will shift on labour-intensive operations first (vegetable harvest, weeding) and reach the major arable operations (drilling, spraying, combining) more gradually.
The pace of the technology change should not be a reason to delay capital decisions you need to make now. Buying the right machine for the next five years, with a clear cost-per-hour basis, is more important than waiting for a future autonomous version that may or may not arrive on a timeline that fits the farm.
Further reading
The Defra Farm Business Survey publishes annual machinery cost averages by farm type.[1] AHDB publishes working machinery cost benchmarks and the cost-per-hour methodology.[4] The major dealer service guides (John Deere, AGCO, CNH, Class, Kubota) publish working schedules. The Association of Independent Crop Consultants (AICC) provides independent cost-of-production benchmarks.[12] For BritFarmers readers, this guide sits alongside our UK Precision Agriculture 2026 guide, our UK Farm Tax 2026: Beyond IHT guide, our UK Farm Insurance 2026 guide and our UK Farm Apprenticeships and Labour 2026 guide.
Sources
[1] Defra, Farm Business Survey: machinery costs and farm fixed costs, gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/farm-business-survey.
[2] Farmers Weekly Buyers Guide and Farmers Guardian Machinery Market reports (annual editions); Cheffins Cambridge Vintage and Cheffins Sale of Farm Machinery quarterly results.
[3] HMRC, Capital allowances and depreciation in farm accounts: practical guidance, gov.uk; ICAEW Farming Group, Working depreciation conventions for agricultural plant.
[4] AHDB, Cost of production benchmarking: machinery, ahdb.org.uk; HSBC Agriculture / AHDB, Working farm machinery cost calculator.
[5] HMRC, Annual Investment Allowance and capital allowances, gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/capital-allowances/annual-investment-allowance; HM Treasury, Capital allowances reform.
[6] Defra and AHDB, Agricultural input cost indices: fuel and oils, gov.uk and ahdb.org.uk.
[7] HM Treasury, Reform to red diesel entitlement: agricultural retention, gov.uk (Finance Act 2021, Schedule 12).
[8] HM Treasury, Autumn Statement 2023: permanent full expensing, gov.uk.
[9] Ringlink and the Scottish Machinery Ring Federation, Machinery rings and shared services, ringlink.co.uk.
[10] Federation of Small Businesses and Right to Repair Europe, Right to repair in agricultural machinery, fsb.org.uk.
[11] Defra and Innovate UK, Farming Innovation Programme: autonomous machinery in agriculture, gov.uk; Small Robot Company and Naio Technologies, public product literature.
[12] Association of Independent Crop Consultants, Independent cost-of-production benchmarks, aicc.org.uk.
[13] John Deere, AGCO Massey Ferguson and Fendt, CNH New Holland and Case IH, Class and Kubota: published dealer service schedules and parts catalogue indices.
[14] NFU, Farm machinery: market commentary and member services, nfuonline.com.
[15] National Association of Agricultural Contractors (NAAC), Contracting rates survey, naac.co.uk.
About the author
I run a salad and field vegetable holding in Suffolk, twenty-three years on the same ground, the last two with a slice of wheat and oilseed rape rotated in alongside the iceberg, baby-leaf and brassicas. The machinery line on the farm accounts is the second-largest after labour, and the conversation that has taken me the longest to learn properly. The notes above are the back-of-envelope working framework I went back to first principles on when the arable went in, and that I’d write down for my own use if I were starting the fleet review over.
The headline: every machine purchase should pass a cost-per-hour test against the contractor rate before any signature on a financing deal. The dealer brochure tells you the headline price; the cost-per-hour tells you the real one.
Disclaimer: This guide is general information about UK farm machinery economics and depreciation in 2026. It is not regulated financial, tax or legal advice and is not a substitute for tailored guidance from your accountant, your land agent or your dealer. Capital allowances, AIA limits, full expensing rules, red diesel entitlement and finance terms change; always confirm the current position before relying on it. Machinery prices, residual values and dealer terms are market-dependent and the figures above are working planning numbers, not promised prices.
