TERRY Evans Reckons Potential Customers for The Italian Tractors Are Easy to Identify

TERRY Evans reckons potential customers for the Italian two-wheel tractors are easy to identify. He says most of them are owners of small holdings, people who have moved to the country for a lifestyle change, with plans to cultivate vegetables. They have a slightly harried, worried countenance about them. A large proportion of them are bearded. "If you want to see a man with a frown on his face, look at a man standing on an acre of unworked land with a shovel in his hand," Mr Evans said. "They've got all the dreams in the world, 'til it comes to actually working. "A lot of these people have not done physical work in their life. So something like this fits the bill." He lifts the arm of one of the Pasquali machines. The narrow Italian two-wheeled tractors imported by Gippsland machinery distributor Vin Rowe , also known as walking tractors, can be fitted with different implements and trailers. "They still put little trailers on them and zip around the roads. You see them travelling around on these in the villages all over Italy all the time," Mr Evans said. Vin Rowe Farm Machinery displayed three models of the Pasquali tractors at the recent Elmore Field Days. It put them alongside other models of equipment for soil cultivation, fodder harvesting, vegetable harvesting and specialist planting machinery imported from manufacturers in countries such as Italy, Norway, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland and Austria. There are five models in the Pasquali two-wheeled tractor range. They range from the TB10 at $3290, equipped with a Honda engine and 46cm rotary tiller, to the XB50, which has a Lombardini diesel engine and 85cm rotary tiller at $9490. Pasquali Macchine Agricole, which has made these machines in Milan since the late 1940s, was acquired more than a dozen years ago by another Italian agricultural and industrial manufacturer, the BCS Group. The company also owns the Ferrari range of cultivators and Mosa portable power generation and welding equipment, as well as its own range of products. Vin Rowe also stocks two BCS walking tractor models. Many years ago, Mr Evans imported the Pasquali two-wheel tractors through a business in Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs called Motorcolt. He gave up importing the Pasquali in the mid-1990s after changing his product mix. The import relationship was taken over by a friend in Sydney, who has since retired and wound down his business. When Mr Evans began working with Vin Rowe Farm Machinery in March last year - handling the distribution and wholesale relationship with Valentini cultivation equipment - he told his new boss that Pasquali was temporarily friendless in Australia. Mr Evans said there was already a large installed base of Pasquali machines in Australia, dating from 1965, and there was a good brand loyalty. He said there was a ready market for spare parts and third party implements. The tree-change movement, of new, energetic lifestyle country dwellers, no longer content to just run horses on a bit of pasture, had established a new demographic and a new potential customer base in the country, Mr Evans said. He said 25 to 30 years ago, the people moving to small-acreage properties were nearly always horse owners. Their purchases to support their animals always drained the budget. "They ran horses. And they had the seat out of their pants, they had no money. The horses kept them that way." However, he reckons small-acreage farmers are now a different demographic, with different aims and pursuits. "Now, it is retirees, superannuants; they are going back to the country or to the farm lifestyle with the real money," Mr Evans said. "They are choosing lifestyle driven by health, every time it is driven by health." To grow their own food on a reasonable scale, he said such farmers wanted strong, versatile equipment built to last. That was why they turned to the equivalent of the Rolls-Royce of specialised small farm cultivation. "The Italians are the kings of cultivation," Mr Evans said. "They had the skinny-gutted tractors to replace the horse, for the cultivation." He said the European commitment to intensive cultivation of arable land would be an essential part of the farm landscape in Australia in years to come, to improve yield and productivity. "For 100 years our answer was always to have more acres, not to produce more off the acres we've got," Mr Evans said. "When the harsh realities of world economics has really hit us, people are going to have to go back and be more productive on the land they have. "If you've got half an acre (0.2ha) at home, you can provide yourselves, say a family with three kids, with vegetables, easy." Mr Evans said many long-term customers had been recommending Pasquali walking tractors for years. Some of them had uploaded their experiences on YouTube, which was good for business. He paid special tribute to organic farmers such as Joyce Wilkie and Michael Plane, who live at Gunderoo, near Canberra. He said they regularly hosted seminars and taught many new small-acre landholders who were investigating growing their own crops. "They bought a diesel Pasquali tractor in 1988," he said. Now, there are hundreds more organic farmers considering how to till their land. Vin Rowe also stocks more than a dozen different implements suited to the BCS and Pasquali walking tractors range. They include harrows, mowers, single-furrow ploughs, reversible ploughs, potato-lifters, bed-shapers, mulchers, and rotary ploughs. The implements also come from the Italian manufacturers such as Berta Franco, Aldo Biagoli, Rinaldi, Tortella and Caravaggi, as well as BCS. Source: Weekly Times Now