Thanks Brent. Let's start with the Worldwide Ag & Turf third quarter results on slide 4.
Net sales were down 5% compared to last year, primarily driven by lower shipment volumes and the unfavorable effects of currency translation; partially offset by price realization, price realization in the quarter was positive by 4%; while currency translation was negative by 3%. Operating profit was $942 million resulting in a 16.6% operating margin for the division. The year-over-year increase is primarily due to price realization, lower SA&G and R&D as well as a decrease in warranty costs. These items were partially offset by the unfavorable effects of foreign currency exchange, lower shipment volumes and impairments and closure costs.
During the quarter, the division incurred charges of $37 million related to the closure of a small tractor facility in China, and the sale of a European Turf business. With that context, let's turn to our 2020 Ag and Turf industry outlook on slide 5. In U.S. and Canada, we expect Ag industry sales to be down roughly 5% to 10% for 2020. During the quarter, sales for small tractors have remained strong as the pandemic has driven an increase in projects for home and property owners. The strong retail environment combined with our planned under production have reduced our field inventory position for the year and should provide a healthy entry point for 2021. Meanwhile demand for large Ag machines is still forecast to be down relative to 2019 though demand has remained relatively stable throughout the year as our long lead order books and early order programs now provide visibility through the end of 2020 and beyond. Farmer sentiment continues to be fluid due to the many uncertain variables impacting our customers headed into 2021. Unresolved issues around global trade and continued government support, combined with a sharp decline in ethanol during the early months of the lockdown have kept grain stocks elevated going into the harvest season. At the same time, the farm equipment fleet continues to age out and new and used inventory positions are low, especially as it relates to Deere equipment relative to competitive machines. Additionally, Precision Ag advancements for new and retrofit solutions continue to unlock economic headroom for our customers. The balance of these factors was reflected in the results of our phase one early order program for planners and sprayers, which both ended up relative to the previous year's program. In comparison to last year keep in mind that 2019 was adversely affected by the delayed planting season. Encouragingly, nearly all of our advanced precision features such as ExactApply and ExactEmerge saw higher take rates compared to the previous year. The results give us confidence in our Precision Ag strategy and demonstrate customers' willingness for sustained investment in technology in the face of uncertain market conditions. Specifically, we see the significant levels of investment in solutions that have the highest demonstrable impact on improved customer economics. Moving on to Europe; the industry's outlook is forecast to be down 5% to 10%. Over the quarter, the outlook for arable farmers declined slightly amid lower grain prices and weakening yields; especially in the UK and France where dry conditions have persisted throughout the growing season. Additionally, dairy margins continue to soften albeit from recent peaks. Meanwhile pork producers continue to enjoy favorable conditions as exports remain strong. Despite some modest headwinds this year, we continue to make progress in the region through our focus on Precision Ag.
Over the year, we've seen increased market share in the 150 plus horsepower tractor category while engaged acres in our operations center has nearly doubled since the start of the year. In South America, industry sales of tractors and combines are projected to be down 10% to 15% for the year. Despite positive fundamentals in Brazil, the effects of COVID and the global trade uncertainty have weighed on farmers throughout the first half of the year. While industry sales will be lower for the fiscal year, we've seen sales momentum building in recent months. And our order books now extend well into the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, indicating a solid start to the year.
Shifting to Asia; industry sales are expected to be down slightly as key growth markets like India are recovering after significant impacts of the countrywide lockdown. Lastly, industry retail sales of Turf and Utility Equipment in the U.S and Canada are projected to be down about 5% in 2020. Moving on to our Ag & Turf forecast on slide 6. Fiscal year 2020 sales of Worldwide Ag & Turf equipment are forecast to be down roughly 10%, which includes expectations of 2.5 points of positive price realization offset by a currency headwind of about two points. For the division's operating margin, our full year forecast is roughly 11.5%, which is inclusive of cost related to both employee separation programs, as well as facility impairments and closures. In total, we estimate these costs to be roughly $260 million for the division in fiscal year 2020.
Before moving on to the Construction & Forestry division, I'd like to first offer a few remarks on the new operating model announced in June. As noted in our release, our smart industrial strategy is designed to unlock new value for customers, helping them to become more profitable and sustainable; while revolutionizing agriculture through rapid introduction of new technologies. To accomplish this, we focused our strategy and organization around the three primary areas shown on slide 7. Production Systems, our Technology Stack, and Lifecycle Solutions. Over the last few years, we've integrated a production systems perspective into our product planning road maps; however, our recent redesign now formally organizes our entire business around these systems, which has important implications for how we plan our product portfolio; and how we allocate capital.
A Production System is illustrative of how our customers get work done and includes both the jobs they perform and the decisions they make to produce an output. In Ag for example, we contemplate every single job and decision required to prepare the soil, to plant the seed; to protect and nurture the crop and to harvest it at the end of the season. The work done preparing the soil has implications for how to plant seeds and promote uniform emergence, which impacts how we care for that crop throughout the growing season; ultimately informing the harvesting job. This entire series of decisions and jobs create the systems in which our customers operate. Our solutions will empower customers to do their jobs more productively, while making better decisions that minimize inputs, maximize outputs and create a complete cycle where each step informs the next. Also critical to unlocking value for customers is the accelerated development, and leverage of our technology stack across our suite of products. Think of our technology stack as the full set of components required to deliver solutions to our customers. For nearly 25 years, we've been investing in core technologies that can be leveraged across the enterprise. From our early development of embedded controllers, software and Telematics; and guidance systems to more recent investments in computer vision, machine learning and data platforms. Today, we're better positioned than anyone to provide seamless, integrated solutions where the sum of our product suite in a production system is greater than each of these machines operating in isolation. Our technology stack is also the key enabler to extract data from one step in the system in order to make the next step more effective. The value creation is powered by our core technologies, and provides us the greatest opportunity for differentiated solutions in the marketplace. Bringing this all together, our production systems approach combined with the precision delivered through our technology stack will deliver a seamless cycle that unlocks the ability to utilize resources in the most precisely targeted manner to achieve optimum output, which means delivering our customers increased productivity, greater profitability; and enhanced environmental outcomes throughout the full production system. Lastly, our strategy puts a renewed focus on lifecycle solutions to enhance our aftermarket and support capabilities.
We see significant opportunity to improve our penetration throughout the entire life of our products, while simultaneously improving customer experience and uptime for their equipment. Our connected machines, the supporting tools and applications; and our highly differentiated dealer organization are critical elements to our initiative. Furthermore, we'll focus on enhancing our e-commerce tools while leveraging a tiered offering to our all makes and remanufacturing segments. Lastly, we'll accelerate our performance upgrade or retrofit business with the intent to proliferate Precision Ag solutions deeper into our installed base at price points that enable owners of used equipment to upgrade into more productive and sustainable equipment moving.
Moving to slide 8. I'd like to spend a few minutes expanding on our production systems framework and give a few examples of what's changing with our new operating model. In the early days of Precision Ag development, some of our solutions offered hard to prove benefits and face lower take rates in the marketplace. As we progressed in this journey, we form production system teams to assess the agronomic and economic impact that our solutions play in the jobs and decisions that farmers make each year. The result of these teams helped produce key innovations over the last few years, such as our ExactEmerge planners and ExactApply sprayers. In fact, we've spent the last several years putting the building blocks in place to deliver differentiated solutions to our customers in the production systems in which they operate, and now is the time to accelerate our vision by formally reorganizing the company around these targeted system. In our new organizational design each division president owns the end-to-end production system for our customer segments. That means the entire suite of products for any crop system is organized and reports to one leader. We think this has important implications for how we allocate capital; shifting more resources toward projects that unlock the most economic value, and deliver the most sustainable outcomes for any given system. In the Ag & Turf division for example, my team will lead and maintain end-to-end responsibility for the corn and soy, small grains and cotton and sugar production systems, which includes all of the engineering, manufacturing and marketing for large tractors; combines, crop care and crop harvesting. Meanwhile, my colleague and partner Mark Von Pentz and his team will oversee turf and utility, dairy livestock and high value crop production systems. The new design will be key to bringing innovative and integrated solutions to market faster than ever before. The real power of our model comes from our ability to scale solutions across geographies and across different production systems. Today, many of our leading technologies are designed for and introduced in the U.S corn and soy production system. We see an enormous opportunity to adapt our solutions for different geographies and accelerate the pace of adoption for farmers. Brazil is a great opportunity, a great example of this opportunity; over the last 18-months, we've introduced nearly all of our leading North American technologies in planting, spraying and harvesting to the Brazilian market. Additionally, we've launched a key initiative to drive adoption of our digital platform. To date, take rates and market acceptance has been very positive with many of our initial introductions selling out within days. With respect to digital adoption, engaged acres have tripled in the region in the last 18-months, while driving higher utilization of the John Deere operations Center.
In addition to leveraging technology in the new geographies, we're also adapting our solutions to scale across different crop production systems. As I mentioned, while technology has tended to be first developed for corn and soy customers; we see significant potential to utilize these innovations for small grains production. Key technologies such as section control or precise seed placement represent enormous near-term opportunities for products like air seeders. While the inclusion of customer vision and computer vision and machine learning hold long-term potential for further automation of the small grains market. Ultimately, our new operating model is essential to capturing the immense opportunities ahead of us. And will help us accelerate and accelerate the pace of adoption for the industry.
At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Brent Norwood to cover the details on the quarter for construction and forestry. Brent?