What Is Zen-Noh?

There is a lot of confusion about the ZEN-NOH (ZenNoh) "brand" and rightfully so. If you label a tractor with something that appears to be a brand then it should not be a surprise when people start to assume that ZEN-NOH must be a brand of tractor. Well... ZEN-NOH is not a tractor brand.

ZEN-NOH (translated means "All Farmers") is actually a very large, government owned, co-op setup in Japan in 1948. In fact, it is the largest co-op in the world with something like 5 million members. So what is a co-op? A co-op (or farming co-operative) is a way for a group of people to get together and combine their purchasing power. Go to gas station and you might pay $2 for a gallon of diesel (I'm sure we will look back on this price in 10 years and laugh). If you and all of your neighbors get together, buy a big diesel tank, and go directly to the fuel terminal- you can buy 50,000 gallons for much less (per gallon). Same thing for oil, tires, spare parts, seed, fertilizer, and so on. The more you buy- the cheaper it typically gets. Japanese farmers pay a yearly membership fee to ZEN-NOH and, in return, they can combine their buying power and access all of the supplies they need at a very reduced price.

It turns out, if you have enough members, this plan also works for TRACTORS. If you and your neighbors were to form a co-op and call up the bosses at Yanmar you probably would not even get past the operator. Yanmar is a BIG company and it takes a lot of buying power to get their attention. ZEN-NOH has a lot of buying power and when they call- the bosses answer. Last year they spent around $1.5 BILLION on farm machinery alone and had roughly $45 Billion in total purchases. Any time you add a "billion" on to the end of the amount of dollars you are willing to spend- people take notice. So, back in the 70's, ZEN-NOH contacted the bosses at Yanmar and Kubota and said "Hey tractor building companies... we would like to order a metric boatload of tractors (I made up this number.. I don't really know how many) this year and we want a big discount and we want the tractors to have our name on them!". Yanmar and Kubota both said "Sold!! Where do we sign?". Before long there were tractors being spit out of both factories with the ZEN-NOH name stuck on them.

So what is different about a Yanmar/ZEN-NOH and a regular Yanmar? The Decal. That's it! The tractors came off of the same assembly line with all of the exact same parts. The only difference was the guy at the end of the line stuck on a different sticker. A YM1510 ZEN-NOH is identical to a YM1510 Yanmar. The only difference is the hood decal. Just be careful as there are Kubota ZEN-NOHs and there are Yanmar ZEN-NOHs. Kubotas will usually start with a Z and Yanmars will always start with a YM.