In Q1 2026, buyer attention across the Australian agricultural machinery market tightened around the most established names, while specialist equipment categories shifted beneath them. John Deere extended its lead in both the overall and mainline rankings, and Honda strengthened its already commanding position in farm bikes. Short line and ATV/UTV segments told a different story, with buyer attention spreading across a wider group of brands rather than consolidating around any single challenger.
Read on for our full category breakdown and the key brand movements shaping the agricultural market this quarter.
A Note on Methodology
This report is based on Retain Media’s proprietary analysis of search volume data in the Australian market in Q1 2026, filtered to isolate brand consideration and buyer intent. We include brand, model, dealership and localised searches, along with modifiers such as reviews or problems, while excluding post-purchase and ownership queries such as parts, servicing, manuals, rentals, and used vehicles.
Our dataset included 100 brands, approximately 50,000 relevant keywords, and more than 1.2 million searches across the quarter. Brand performance was analysed across five categories: All Brands, Mainline Brands, Short Line Brands, Farm Bikes, and ATVs and UTVs.
A Note From Our Researchers
Please note that our keyword lists and data sourcing methods are continuously evolving as we work to enhance the accuracy and depth of our search volume reporting. All data is refreshed with each quarterly report, so figures within any given edition reflect the most current available snapshot. As such, some metrics may shift quarter-over-quarter as these refinements are applied.
Retain Media provides this data “as is” for informational purposes only and accepts no liability for decisions made based on this reporting. Users are encouraged to use this data as one of multiple data points in their market analysis.
John Deere and Honda Tighten Their Hold While Specialist Segments Rebalance
Q1 2026 confirmed a pattern building across several quarters. In the categories where brand authority and dealer breadth are the primary decision drivers, the leading brands gained ground while challengers gave it back. John Deere’s mainline share at 24.8% and Honda’s combined farm bike share at 72.4% are not the kind of figures that fluctuate dramatically from quarter to quarter; they represent entrenched positions that grow more difficult to challenge over time.
In short line and ATV/UTV, the dynamics are different. Both categories rewarded a wider group of brands, and the composition of the top performers shifted more visibly than it did in core machinery. The Bourgault surge ahead of the autumn planting window, the Hardi improvement in the sprayer segment, and CFMOTO CFORCE’s entry into the ATV/UTV top 20 all reflect a market where timing, product relevance, and local search visibility can move the needle within a single quarter.
For OEMs and dealers operating in these categories, understanding the buyer calendar is as valuable as understanding the competitive landscape.
Top 20 Most-Searched: All Brands
In the overall agricultural brand ranking, the leading trio became more entrenched in Q1 2026. John Deere moved from 17.4% in Q4 2025 to 18.1%, the clearest gain among the major brands. Massey Ferguson held a steady second at 15.1%, up fractionally from 15.0%, while Kubota edged from 8.7% to 8.8%. Taken together, these three brands held 42.0% of all consideration in Q1 2026, compared to 41.1% last quarter.
The second tier was more active. New Holland eased slightly from 6.7% to 6.6%, a signal of stability rather than decline. Claas gave back more meaningful ground, falling from 6.4% to 5.3%, its sharpest single-quarter drop in the data. Case IH also softened from 4.1% to 3.8%.
In contrast, JCB rose from 3.2% to 3.6%, while Manitou recovered from 2.5% to 2.8%. Silvan remained inside the top 10 but eased from 3.3% to 3.0%, and Kioti slipped from 2.3% to 2.2%.
The Rest of the Top 20
Below the top 10, movements were smaller but consistent in direction. Kanga eased from 2.3% to 2.1%. Vermeer improved from 1.7% to 1.9%, and TTI rose from 1.6% to 1.8%. Both brands have shown quiet but consistent upward momentum across several quarters, suggesting gradual audience awareness rather than a one-quarter spike.
United Heavy Industries lifted from 1.5% to 1.6%. Fendt and Deutz-Fahr each eased 0.1 points to 1.4% and 1.3%, respectively. Hardi and Mahindra both improved from 1.2% to 1.3%, Burder slipped from 1.0% to 0.9%, and Avant Equipment recovered from 0.7% to 0.8%.
Movement at the Margins
One brand changed hands this quarter. MacDon, which held position 17 in Q4 2025, dropped out of the top 20, giving back share across both the overall and short line categories. Avant Equipment returned to the mix at 0.8%, having fallen below the threshold in Q4.
The movement at this end of the table is typically a function of small absolute shifts rather than dramatic swings in buyer attention. However, MacDon’s exit across two categories simultaneously is worth monitoring heading into Q2.
Notable Movers and Brands to Watch
John Deere remains the headline story overall. Moving from 17.4% to 18.1% in a single quarter reflects a brand absorbing a larger share of category attention while several mid-tier competitors weakened. Claas’s reversal is equally significant. After finishing Q4 2025 at 6.4%, the brand fell back to 5.3%, indicating its Q4 momentum did not carry into the new year.
Heading into Q2, JCB is the name to watch. The brand has now risen in two of the last three quarters in the overall ranking, and the trajectory holds even as several larger brands around it have softened. Telehandler demand in Australian mixed-use agricultural operations has been structurally growing, and JCB’s product breadth across that category means it is well placed to continue capturing share.
Vermeer and TTI are worth similar attention. Both have added share in consecutive quarters without a pullback, a less common pattern in this dataset than it might appear. At 1.9% and 1.8% respectively, neither is close to the top tier, but their consistency suggests genuine awareness-building over time. United Heavy Industries has shown quiet resilience across the same period, improving from 1.5% to 1.6% this quarter while several comparable brands dipped.
Top 20 Most-Searched: Mainline Brands
The mainline segment sharpened further in Q1 2026. John Deere climbed from 23.8% to 24.8%, adding a full percentage point to its already dominant position. Massey Ferguson edged from 20.5% to 20.7%, and Kubota moved from 11.9% to 12.1%. The combined share of these three brands reached 57.6%, up from 56.2% in Q4 2025, meaning everyone else competed for roughly 42% of attention.
That search concentration matters more in a contracting market where total tractor retail sales fell 8.2% between January and March. When overall volume is softer, the brands holding or growing their share of consideration are better positioned to capture a larger proportion of transactions.
New Holland held at 9.1%, steady for two consecutive quarters. However, the more significant change came from Claas, which fell from 8.8% to 7.3%, its sharpest mainline decline in the dataset. That 1.5-point loss signals the brand’s Q4 position may have been driven by seasonal interest rather than sustained buyer behaviour. Case IH also softened from 5.7% to 5.2%.
JCB was the clearest gainer below the top six, rising from 4.4% to 4.9%. Kioti eased from 3.2% to 3.0%, while United Heavy Industries edged up from 2.1% to 2.2% and Fendt slipped from 2.1% to 2.0%.
The Rest of the Top 20
In a mature, brand-led market, holding position is the key result for brands outside the top 10. A brand that stays in the top 20 across consecutive quarters is maintaining a buyer audience that has not drifted to a competitor, which has real value in a contracting market.
Deutz-Fahr eased from 1.9% to 1.8%, while Mahindra held flat at 1.7% for a second straight quarter. Versatile improved from 0.9% to 1.0%, McCormick recovered from 0.7% to 0.8%, and Leyland Tractor improved from 0.4% to 0.5%. Iseki, TYM Tractors, Valtra, Kverneland, and Sota Tractors all held within 0.1 points of their prior positions.
Movement at the Margins
The mainline top 20 was unchanged between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. All 20 brands that held positions in the prior period retained them, with no new entrant displacing anyone at the threshold.
Notable Movers and Brands to Watch
John Deere’s move from 23.8% to 24.8% is the biggest standout. A brand at that scale adding a full point in a single quarter suggests the top of the market is becoming more, not less, difficult to compete with.
Heading into Q2, JCB is the clearest challenger to watch. A move from 4.4% to 4.9% is the strongest gain recorded anywhere in the mainline top 10 this period, and it follows a quarter where the brand had softened from 4.8% to 4.4%. The recovery is sharper than the dip that preceded it, which is a pattern worth keeping an eye on.
Claas will be worth watching for the opposite reason. The Q4 2025 peak at 8.8% was the brand’s highest recorded mainline position in the dataset. Whether Q1’s 7.3% is a reset to a new baseline or the beginning of a longer drift remains the key question heading into the cooler months.
Top 20 Most-Searched: Short Line Brands
The short line segment was the most dynamic category in Q1 2026. Silvan remained number one, but its share fell from 12.2% to 11.1%. While it still holds a leadership position, this drop might indicate that buyers broadened their short line research instead of clustering around a single dominant name.
It’s worth noting that while this quarter’s reading suggests a decline for Silvan, the bigger picture shows a brand that grew its share by more than two percentage points across the second half of 2025, where it has retained almost all of that gain. Silvan is not giving back ground so much as it is finding a new baseline, and it remains meaningfully ahead of where it was six months ago.
Manitou rose from 9.2% to 10.2%, closing the gap on Silvan. Kanga eased from 8.4% to 7.8%, while Vermeer improved from 6.2% to 6.9%, and TTI lifted from 6.0% to 6.5%. Hardi improved from 4.5% to 4.9%, staying in line with seasonal broadacre farming research patterns.
Burder slipped from 3.6% to 3.3%, while Avant Equipment rose from 2.7% to 2.9%. MacDon fell from 4.6% to 2.4%, the largest single-quarter decline in the short line category. Bourgault’s move from 1.4% to 2.5% is the standout inside the top 10, though it aligns directly with pre-planting research behaviour rather than a broader shift in audience.
The Rest of the Top 20
Further down the short line ranking, the picture remained active. Goldacres improved from 2.0% to 2.2%, while Kuhn and Krone both dropped from 3.3% to 2.1%, giving back much of the momentum they had built in Q4 2025.
John Berends held flat at 2.1%, and Rapid Spray rose from 1.8% to 2.1%. Farmtech improved from 1.6% to 1.9%, while Croplands held at 1.3%. Serafin Machinery lifted from 1.0% to 1.3%, and Agco remained stable at 1.3%.
The spread of gains across this many brands in a single quarter is significant. There was no single challenger that absorbed Silvan and MacDon’s share. Instead, it dispersed across Manitou, Bourgault, Vermeer, TTI, Hardi, and a cluster of smaller names. For OEMs and dealers, this pattern typically signals a market in early-stage research across multiple equipment categories at once, rather than buyers narrowing toward specific purchase decisions.
Movement at the Margins
Two brands exited the short line top 20 between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, and one entered. Mchale, which had been building quietly through 2025 and held 1.3% in Q4, dropped below the threshold in Q1. Vennings also exited after holding 1.2% in Q4 2025. Their departures opened a position for Serafin Machinery, which climbed from 1.0% to 1.3% and took its place in the short line top 20.
Notable Movers and Brands to Watch
Short line is the clearest example of market rebalancing in Q1 2026. Silvan still leads, but its 1.1-point decline opened the door for a broader cluster of brands to gain ground. Manitou, Vermeer, TTI, Hardi and Bourgault all strengthened, suggesting that buyer attention shifted across a wider mix of equipment categories and supplier types.
The biggest single reversal belongs to MacDon, which dropped 2.2 points from 4.6% to 2.4%. Combined with the declines from Kuhn and Krone, these findings suggest the quarter was less favourable for the brands that had surged late in 2025 and more favourable for a wider spread of generalist and application-specific short line names.
Heading into Q2, Rapid Spray is the name to watch. The brand has now recorded three or more consecutive quarters of growth, rising from 1.6% in Q2 2025 to 1.7%, 1.8%, and now 2.1%. That is a steady, unbroken upward line through the full year. Rapid Spray is now level with John Berends and approaching Goldacres, and another quarter of growth would make it one of the more consistent performers in the short line segment.
The Most-Searched Farm Bikes
Farm bikes remained the most concentrated category by a considerable margin. Honda CT125 lifted from 42.1% last quarter to 42.9% in Q1 2026, while Honda XR150L also strengthened from 16.9% to 17.3%. Those two models alone accounted for 60.2% of the listed farm bike searches in Q1, up from 59.0% last quarter.
Across all four Honda models tracked in the dataset, total share reached 72.4% in Q1 2026, a mild but notable gain from 71.4% in Q4 2025. That figure puts the scale of the brand’s advantage in perspective, with nearly three in four farm bike searches involving a Honda model.
Overall, changes in farm bike searches were moderate. Honda XR190CT slipped from 8.5% to 7.8%, matching Yamaha AG100 at 7.8% after the Yamaha model fell from 8.2%. Kawasaki Stockman edged up from 6.0% to 6.1%, Yamaha AG200F eased from 5.9% to 5.7%, Honda CTX200 improved from 3.9% to 4.4%, Yamaha AG125 rose from 4.2% to 4.4%, and Suzuki Trojan 200 fell from 4.2% to 3.8%.
The Rest of the Top Searched
Beyond the dominant Honda pair, share compresses into a narrow band where small shifts of a few tenths of a point determine ranking positions. Yamaha’s AG family, the Kawasaki Stockman, and the Suzuki Trojan 200 all retain defined buyer audiences, but the category lacks the fragmentation visible elsewhere in the market, a dynamic that reflects Honda’s hold on farm bike consideration.
Movement at the Margins
The farm bike category showed no position changes to the nine tracked models between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. It is the most settled dataset in this report.
Notable Movers and Brands to Watch
In this dataset, farm bikes are largely a Honda category. Search volumes around the CT125 and XR150L models show a brand strengthening its hold quarter-on-quarter. For competing brands, the most realistic path to share gain is not head-to-head competition with Honda, but positioning in adjacent spaces that the brand does not reach.
Heading into Q2, Yamaha AG125 is the name to watch. The model rose from 4.2% to 4.4% this quarter and recovered ground it had gradually lost through Q3 and Q4 2025. A second consecutive quarter of growth would confirm that the AG125 is rebuilding its audience with buyers open to differing brands and models.
Top 20 Most-Searched: ATV/UTV
ATV and UTV consideration remained much more fragmented than any other category in Q1 2026. John Deere Gator held first place at 6.8%, unchanged from Q4 2025, leading the category without dominating it. Behind it, Kawasaki Mule rose from 3.2% to 3.6%, and Polaris Ranger also improved from 3.3% to 3.6%, drawing level for second.
Can Am Defender rose from 2.6% to 2.9%, and Kubota RTV improved from 2.7% to 2.8%. Can Am Maverick slipped from 3.0% to 2.6%, and Can Am Outlander eased from 2.7% to 2.6%. Across Can Am’s three tracked models, combined share in Q1 2026 was 8.1%, enough to outpace the John Deere Gator’s individual 6.8% lead when viewed at the brand level.
The same brand-level lens makes Polaris’s position even more compelling. The Ranger, Ranger 500, Ranger 1000, RZR, and RZR XP 1000 Sport collectively held approximately 10.5% of ATV/UTV consideration in Q1 2026, up from around 10.0% last quarter. When put into perspective, that makes Polaris the largest single-brand presence in the ATV/UTV category by a meaningful margin.
CFMOTO UFORCE 1000 fell from 3.0% to 2.5%. Meanwhile, CFMOTO CFORCE more than doubled from 1.0% to 2.1%, making it one of the standout movers this quarter, and Yamaha YFM700 Raptor held flat at 2.5%.
The Rest of the Top 20
Outside the leading 10, several models improved from smaller bases.
Honda Pioneer 1000 rose from 1.8% to 2.0%, and Polaris Ranger 500 increased from 1.8% to 2.0%. Kubota RTV-X900 held at 1.9%, while Can Am Maverick X3 eased from 1.9% to 1.8%. CFMOTO CFORCE 1000 dropped from 2.3% to 1.8%, and Polaris RZR slipped from 2.0% to 1.7%.
At the tail end, Polaris RZR XP 1000 Sport moved from 1.6% to 1.8%, Yamaha YFZ450R edged from 1.6% to 1.7%, Yamaha Viking fell from 1.5% to 1.4%, and Polaris Ranger 1000 improved from 1.3% to 1.4%.
The pattern across the bottom half of the table is one of redistribution rather than concentration. Buyers appear to be moving between adjacent models within the same brand family and across competing brands, rather than settling around any single preferred option.
Movement at the Margins
One model changed in the ATV/UTV top 20 between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. The Polaris RZR Trail S 1000 Premium, which held 1.2% in Q4 2025, dropped out of the top 20. In its place, CFMOTO CFORCE entered the ranking at 2.1%, the only new model to appear this quarter.
Notable Movers and Brands to Watch
The most important ATV and UTV insight remains the category’s fragmentation. John Deere Gator leads at 6.8%, but when viewed against Can Am’s 8.1% combined share and Polaris’s approximate 10.5%, the individual model ranking understates how competitive the brand-level picture is.
Heading into Q2, CFMOTO CFORCE is the name to watch. More than doubling its share in a single quarter is the largest proportional gain recorded anywhere in the ATV/UTV dataset, and it comes at a time when CFMOTO’s distribution footprint in Australia is still growing. Notably, the CFORCE 1000 held its own at 1.8% over the same period, meaning the CFORCE’s rise did not come at the expense of its stablemate. If both models hold or improve in Q2, that would confirm CFMOTO is building a broader audience rather than simply shifting attention between models.
Trust Retain Media for Industry-Leading Insights
Q1 2026 opened with a stronger bias toward established leaders in the Australian agricultural market. John Deere expanded its share in both the overall and mainline tables, while Massey Ferguson and Kubota maintained solid support behind it. Farm bikes remained exceptionally concentrated around Honda, reinforcing the position that some agricultural categories are now defined as much by habit and trust as by active brand switching.
For OEMs, dealers, and marketers, that two-speed dynamic means strategy needs to be calibrated to category. In core machinery, the priority should be protecting existing consideration share through strong search presence, authoritative content, and dealer-level local visibility.
In specialist and utility equipment, the opportunity is more active. Brands that monitor category search trends and respond with relevant, timely campaigns can move the needle within a single quarter, as Bourgault, CFMOTO CFORCE, and Serafin Machinery all demonstrated this period.
To find out how Retain Media can help your brand build and convert consideration in the Australian agricultural market, explore our full suite of market reports or get in touch with our team. We also cover the truck market, caravan market, motorbike market, marine market, and more.
