About Australasian Farmers' & Dealers' Journal

Australasian Farmers' & Dealers' Journal

Overview

The Australasian Farmers' & Dealers' Journal, known throughout the industry by its initials AFDJ, is an Australian agricultural trade journal serving the farm machinery and farm supply sector. According to the journal's own About page, it has been published since 1984, which makes it one of the longer-running specialist titles in Australian rural media. Its purpose is deliberately trade-facing rather than general: AFDJ describes itself as a main industry news source for contacting farm machinery and equipment distributors and farm supply stores, and as a channel through which manufacturers, importers, suppliers and dealers reach the people who sell, service and buy farm equipment.

The journal operates in two formats that work together. A print edition appears four times a year, in February, May, August and November, and is designed to be kept as a permanent reference by its readers. Alongside it, the AFDJ website carries continuous industry news, with fresh stories published on a near-daily basis across cropping, livestock, machinery and agribusiness. The combination means the title functions both as a quarterly reference journal for the machinery trade and as a rolling news service for the wider farming sector.

Although machinery sits at the centre of the title, its coverage extends well beyond equipment. News on the website ranges across grain and cotton production, beef and dairy markets, fertiliser and fuel supply, rural policy, farm exports and seasonal conditions, reflecting the commercial reality that machinery dealers and their customers operate inside the whole economy of Australian agriculture.

History

AFDJ dates its own history to 1984, when the journal began publication as a specialist title for the farm machinery trade. Trade journals of this kind grew up alongside the dealer networks that distributed tractors, harvesters and implements across rural Australia, providing a printed meeting point for manufacturers and importers at one end of the supply chain and local dealers, resellers and large farming enterprises at the other. AFDJ's own description of its role has remained consistent with that founding purpose: to connect local and overseas companies with active dealers, farm supply resellers, large-scale farming enterprises and farm contractors.

For much of its life the print journal was the product, arriving quarterly and retained by readers as a reference for products, suppliers and industry events. The journal still publishes a guide to field days, agricultural shows, expos and rural conferences, a service that reflects its long-standing position inside the industry's calendar of machinery demonstrations and regional shows.

The arrival of the AFDJ website changed the rhythm of the title without changing its identity. The site now carries breaking industry news continuously, while the print editions continue on their February, May, August and November cycle. The website also maintains a searchable back-issues section, so that product stories and manufacturer information published in past articles remain available to producers and contractors researching equipment purchases. Industry directory listings name David Tatlow as the journal's editor, with Ben Alcott among its contributing authors.

Programming and Content

Content in AFDJ is organised around the information needs of the machinery trade and the farming businesses it supplies. The website's news coverage is divided into sections that include cropping, agribusiness, machinery and livestock, supplemented by briefs, insights and opinion pieces, and coverage of field days and exhibitions.

The machinery coverage is the journal's signature content. It reports product releases and updates from manufacturers, importers and dealers, covering tractors, harvest fronts and harvesting platforms, sprayers, seeders and air carts, spreaders, tyres and telehandlers, along with locally built equipment from Australian manufacturers such as Marshall Multispread's Roesner family business, Midwest Fabrication and Grizzly. Stories typically explain what a machine does, the farming conditions it is designed for and the companies bringing it to market, which makes the section a practical buying reference for dealers and large producers.

Around that core, AFDJ reports the business of farming in depth. Cropping coverage follows seasonal conditions, planting progress and harvest forecasts, including summer and winter crop outlooks and cotton planting reports. Livestock coverage tracks cattle and sheep markets, record bull sales and dairy demand. Agribusiness stories deal with fuel and fertiliser supply, labour and visa policy, water and Murray-Darling Basin issues, farm income and export figures, and the financial results of global machinery companies such as AGCO. During 2026 the site has carried running coverage of the 2025-26 season's record farmgate values and forecasts for the 2026-27 season, showing the news service operating on a current, daily cycle.

The journal is also a reference point for the industry's event calendar. It publishes listings and reports for field days, agricultural shows and expos, and carries supplier catalogues on its website, extending its original print role as the trade's reference guide into digital form.

Audience and Reach

AFDJ is written for a defined trade readership rather than a general audience. In its own description, its print circulation goes to agronomists, farm consultants, dealers, farm supply resellers, manufacturers, distributors of farm machinery and to the biggest buyers in the sector, namely large-scale farming enterprises and contractors. The journal states that it has an audited circulation of over 5,500 readers receiving the print edition four times a year; that figure is the journal's own published claim and is presented here as such.

That readership profile matters to the title's commercial model. Dealers and distributors are the intermediaries through whom most farm machinery is sold in Australia, so a journal concentrated in their hands offers manufacturers a direct line to the trade. The large producers and contractors on the circulation list are, in turn, the sector's heaviest equipment buyers, the readers most likely to act on product coverage.

The website widens that reach beyond the print list. Its news is freely accessible and covers the whole farming economy, so the online audience extends to working farmers following crop, livestock and market news alongside the trade readers who remain the journal's core. No independent web traffic figures for the site are published, and none are claimed here.

Digital Presence

The AFDJ website, at afdj.com.au, is the title's daily face. It is updated continuously with breaking industry news and seasonal articles covering products, services and urgent industry changes affecting the purchase of farm equipment and supplies for cropping, beef, sheep and dairy enterprises. Category archives on the site run to dozens of pages in the machinery section alone, indicating a deep accumulation of product coverage over the life of the site.

The site is structured as a news service with sections for the latest news, briefs, cropping, agribusiness, machinery, livestock, field days and exhibitions, and insights and opinion. It carries display advertising from machinery and rural supply brands, an events listing service, supplier catalogues and a back-issues search that lets readers retrieve information from past articles. Weather information for farming districts is also linked from the homepage, underlining the site's practical, working-farmer orientation.

Activity through 2026 confirms the site is in full current operation: homepage stories address the 2026-27 growing season, machinery company results for the second quarter of 2026 and events including the 2026 Mount Isa Mines Rodeo, and advertising material on the site is dated through October 2026.

Ownership and Organisation

AFDJ is an independently operated specialist trade publisher publishing nationally for the Australian farm machinery industry, and is listed in industry directories as a Melbourne, Victoria title. The journal's organisation is built around a small editorial operation producing both the quarterly print edition and the continuously updated website; industry directory listings identify David Tatlow as editor and Ben Alcott as a contributing author.

The business is advertising-supported, with revenue drawn from the manufacturers, importers, distributors and rural suppliers whose products and services the journal covers, and who buy space in the print editions and on the website to reach its trade readership. Its events guide and catalogue services are extensions of that same trade-directory role.

Contact and Availability

The print edition of the Australasian Farmers' & Dealers' Journal is published four times a year, in February, May, August and November, and circulates to machinery dealers, farm supply businesses, consultants, distributors and large farming enterprises across Australia. The AFDJ website at afdj.com.au is freely available and updated continuously, with news, product coverage, event listings, supplier catalogues and a searchable archive of back issues. Enquiries, including privacy matters, are directed through the website; the journal's published privacy contact is its admin email address at the afdj.com.au domain. In line with WorldNM policy, the public business email field for this listing is intentionally left blank.