In the first place I would question just what machinery the farmers were buying, regardless of source. Farming was labor intensive, plantation agriculture even more than most. There wasn't any machinery for them to be importing that would help that. In the second place I would dispute your claim that there were more farmers down south than up North. There was three times the farm acreage up North than down South. Almost twice as many draft animals, 1.5 times as much livestock of all kinds. The North produced twice as much corn, four times as much wheat, all of which indicates a large rural population. And if we accept your claim as true for the sake of arguement, a much larger market for imported machinery.
I should have said machined tools and products produced by machinery like cheap cloth and farm implements. But then you already knew that. You site stats. Can you tell me what percentage of state gdp came from agricultural output in the north as compared to that of the south? I don’t know. Its important to this discussion.