Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

I just want to throw my 2¢ out there, as a mid-20&#x27;s who went to a high-rural-population high school, there&#x27;s an entire new generation of farmers who have a) accepted that Deere&#x27;s need constant&#x2F;regular service calls, and b) don&#x27;t care to learn how to fix it (or older equipment) themselves. At the end of the day farming is just a business same as any other, it&#x27;s the same reason why a lot of trucking companies lease their trucks or warehouses lease their forklifts, it&#x27;s generally cheaper and less of a headache overall.<p>I&#x27;ve tried to make pleas with some of my old friends who&#x27;ve complained about the locked-down nature of their JD equipment, explaining that other companies like Kubota <i>don&#x27;t</i> have that same limitation, but the branding is just too strong (&quot;the Kubota might be cheaper to buy, and cheaper to run, and I can easily maintain it myself, but, it&#x27;s not a John Deere&quot; - actual quote from a SW Ontario farmer)

No-one wants to sell hardware any longer, it&#x27;s not as profitable as providing it on a subscription (dare we say &quot;rent&quot;) and forcing all support, maintenance and additions to go through your channels as part of the subscription package.<p>Unfortunately this trend is everywhere now. It happened to servers, media, has started to happen to cars... but it&#x27;s happened already to agricultural hardware.<p>Super profitable if you are the provider (especially with all the data one can yield from operating the hardware), super annoying and frustrating if you are the consumer.

diesel engine mechanic by trade here, and ive followed this topic with interest for about five years now. Its similar to large over-the-road trucks in that its ultimately manufacturers catering to large fleets instead of owner&#x2F;operators.<p>most farms in America are corporate monoliths. &quot;farmers&quot; here want mttf, mtbf, metrics, and a projection of how many cam chains, PTO knuckles, lockout converters, etc... they will need to buy in 30 years of depreciable service for a machine. They want to be able to carve the machine they own down to the last cent...the only way to do that is to turn your IH or Komatsu into a rolling cloud. even the windshield wipers get a sensor.<p>smaller farms with actual farmers that wear hats and overalls already balk at a million dollar sticker shock from a harvester, and if you ever go to a farm and take a look around, most tractors there are nearly sixty years old. the priority is farming, not investor return. The tractor needs to perform its stated function first before anything else matters. service interval warnings and degraded performance alerts here are <i>a failure condition</i> the farmer works around. they arent incentivized to stop what theyre doing at 4:15 AM and call up the local JD dealer 143 miles away for an appointment. there isnt a second tractor.<p>If legislation isnt passed, ultimately youll end up with what commecial trucks got in response to sensor overkill: Gliders. gliders are 60 year old truck drivetrains and engines that get a new cab and body parts, and get recertified for the road. they belch smog and roar like a freight train at idle, but all thats grandfathered into EPA legislation. New manufacturers get to crank out fleet machines at high prices, and owner&#x2F;operators get their old reliable filling the parking lot with NOx and waxy sulfur haze at 4 am. they become a market that manufacturers refuse to tap, because it cannot be fully exploited to the disadvantage of the operator.

I mean, if two of the biggest companies of the world, Apple and Tesla can get away with it, why not the rest of the markets?<p>This trend needs to stop. I cannot fathom how anyone thought preventing farmers, FARMERS for crying out loud, the people who grow our goddamn food, from repairing their equipment is way, way beyond me..

People also want control over the information collected from their farming equipment and sent to headquarters. The machines collect information about exactly how much of which crops are planted and then at the end of the year it knows exactly the yield as it is being harvested. Knowing yields before anyone else is very valuable.

My dad is also a farmer, and im impressed about the large range of knowlegde of all farmers, from nature to mechanic. I think this problem is already for a long time, and there are many farmers that dont buy new tractors anymore for this reason, that they cannot repair the tractor anymore, and it can cost a lot of money because they cannot harvest, and are waiting for the tractor dealer.<p>But i think the same problem is for cars, you cannot e.g. repair your Tesla everywhere, this is also very closed.

Making something that only you can repair can be quite a lucrative business. This documentary is quite interesting:<p>McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4</a>

Just don&#x27;t buy Apple, John Deere or similar products. There are better alternatives and you&#x27;re getting yourself into a trap where seemingly only government can help you, just because you wanted to buy more prestigious goods.

&gt; Equipment manufacturers collect lots and lots of data about soil, weather, yields, and other factors, which they can then share with or sell to “affiliates and suppliers.”<p>So a company selling seeds (with a no-reselling clause in their contracts) could buy that information, make a good guess at a farmer&#x27;s profit margin, and individually adjust their pricing to the maximum that each farmer would be willing to pay.<p>Yet another way in which big players can abuse information asymmetry.

Perhaps put those farmers in touch with diabetics who would like some affordable insulin, or researchers who would like to consult publicly funded, peer-reviewed-on-their-own-time, research.

Background: grew up in farming communities, live in a farming community, almost everyone around us farms.<p>Repairable tractors would be a huge boon. I wish to anyone listening that Deere, New Holland, Valtra, Fendt and co would produce properly repairable, open heavy hardware.<p>Deere is the worst in this, but the rest of the industry isn&#x27;t anywhere near as good as it should be.<p>There&#x27;s a reason you see old Defenders, Fourtraks, Rangers, Hiluxes and their ilk around so much on farms. They&#x27;re mechanically simple, which means you can repair them and keep them going basically indefinitely. Compare that to a modern Deere 7 series for example, and whilst the Deere is more capable, if something goes wrong, you&#x27;re basically screwed. I&#x27;ve no problem with the hardware getting more advanced, but that same maintainability needs to be baked in.<p>The problem is, no-one seems interested in shaking things up there, and the manufacturers aren&#x27;t in any hurry to change. They&#x27;re a conservative bunch who don&#x27;t need to, and for whom it&#x27;s directly more profitable to make machines which can&#x27;t be repaired by anyone other than themselves and people they authorise.

Old tractors are bringing top dollar at auctions (and have been for some time now). IMO, the same thing will happen with old cars&#x2F;trucks some day. Now, they are mostly hobby cars for collectors and auto enthusiasts, but some day will be widely sought after due to more people wanting&#x2F;needing to repair them.<p>Late 80s and early 90s Toyotas will be sold at a premium as will any&#x2F;all old Ford F-150 trucks.

Farmers do not want to pay for anything. My dealings with people in the farming community is that completely devalue everything around as a négociation tactic. They do not want to pay anymore than they have to for anything. In general, I don&#x27;t work for or with them anymore because of the horrible way I have been treated by them. (bit generalised, but I spend 10 years working in the community)<p>JD is moving to a Tractor as a Service model. JD does not want to open up their systems because before not long, you just hire a robotic service to come and plow or harvest your fields. JD sees this coming and wants to be in the best possible position to market its services to land owners.

&gt; A few decades ago, any given farmer often had the skills and tools needed to quickly make repairs if their machinery broke down. These days, however, it’s not so straightforward. Most modern farm equipment is technologically advanced, containing computers and sensors that collect and transmit data. As a result, specific software tools are typically necessary to address mechanical failures and other issues.<p>&gt; However, most companies refuse to make those tools available to farmers, making it exceptionally difficult to fix broken machinery on their own. They can’t even go an independent mechanic, since manufacturers won’t sell them parts or diagnostic tools either. This leaves farmers essentially no choice but to take their broken equipment to a licensed dealership.<p>&gt; This isn’t cheap. A farmer might spend thousands of dollars on a simple adjustment they could have done themselves with the appropriate resources. On the other hand, this arrangement has proven wildly lucrative for manufacturers; for Deere, as an example, parts and repairs are up to six times more profitable than selling the equipment itself.<p>This is a part of a larger pattern. Our current underlying system &quot;keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits&quot;. The current system enables &quot;an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies – for copyrights, trademarks and patents – [which] restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity&quot; [1].<p>Imagine today&#x27;s high-tech world, without the capitalist intellectual property system. It will allow many more people to become skilled and able. I think we will look back at this phase of human civilization in horror; IP systems are an excessive way of dominating people and stifling their growth.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wealthofthecommons.org&#x2F;essay&#x2F;peer-peer-economy-and-new-civilization-centered-around-sustenance-commons" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wealthofthecommons.org&#x2F;essay&#x2F;peer-peer-economy-and-ne...</a>

I don&#x27;t find the article anymore, but I read that this is the reason why US farmers were buying Belorussian tractors<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;belarus-tractor.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;company&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;rare-soviet-era-tractor-sparks-international-interest&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;belarus-tractor.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;company&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;rare-soviet-...</a>

Not sure if anybody has mentioned this regarding open source hardware, they are really doing a great job repairing on their own<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.opensourceecology.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Main_Page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.opensourceecology.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Main_Page</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;hl7lZZP21c8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;hl7lZZP21c8</a> | Open Building Institute - Introductory Video<p>3. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;marcinose&#x2F;playlists" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;marcinose&#x2F;playlists</a> | Marcin Jakubowski<p>4. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;S63Cy64p2lQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;S63Cy64p2lQ</a> | Civilization starter kit | Marcin Jakubowski | TEDxKC

This kind of anti-consumer lock in seems to be the natural course of things when more and more stuff runs software which the buyer has no control over. I don&#x27;t think we can fight this with consumer decisions only, it is just too profitable to shakedown consumers like this.

I wonder why JD does not make a large simple tractor that is mostly mechanical and hydraulic using standard&#x2F;common parts and sell them at a higher price? They could advertise them to be owner repairable to justify the higher price. It seems there is a demand.

I’m a fan of right to repair, but I think it’s odd to include privacy &#x2F; data breech concerns as an advocacy point. Operationalizing right to repair typically means making software more interoperable and sharing access information with third parties, which probably isn’t great for privacy &#x2F; data security. This was the main tack that auto companies took when fighting a recent MA ballot initiative (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2020_Massachusetts_Question_1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2020_Massachusetts_Question_...</a>), and there could be at least <i>some</i> truth to it.

Adding to the list of people who grew up on a ranch...<p>Growing up in the 80s and 90s, we had a bunch of old farm equipment, some from like the 1930s-era. Mostly a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s.<p>And like every bit of equipment on the place had special operation rules.<p>&quot;Don&#x27;t run that tractor past 5k RPMs&quot; or &quot;Don&#x27;t use the PTO Shaft (Power Take Off, the gear in the back that hooks in to power towed equipment) from Tractor A with Equipment Item B since it&#x27;ll blow out.&quot; &quot;Remember Tractor J is Brand X, but it has an engine from Brand Z, and a PTO shaft from Brand Y...&quot;<p>Point being, like every piece of equipment was rigged together with duct tape. It&#x27;s horrible unsafe. When you buy used equipment, nothing comes written down... like you try it, break it, and duct tape it all back together again.<p>Parts from Brand Y in Engine X -- because that&#x27;s what the implement had in stock when you needed to repair something. Lots of home-welds, lots of splice jobs. Need a new hose? Grab one off a car... it&#x27;s not rated for the tractor, but it sort of fits... and it lets you get the job done today... so cool, &quot;works&quot; and then likely just forget about it until it breaks.<p>So how on earth could John Deere be liable for the performance or safety of their equipment? If a John Deere tractor blows up, or more aptly some part suffers catastrophic failure and hurts someone... who&#x27;s at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs?<p>And, in the case of accidents, even if it&#x27;s the farmer who is at, the brand suffers from the news report, &quot;A farmer father of 7 was killed today when his John Deere tractor malfunctioned...&quot; Left out of the story is the fact that the farmer didn&#x27;t repair it to spec, or the guy the farmer bought it from didn&#x27;t repair it to spec...<p>Anyway I side with John Deere here. It&#x27;s chaos not to lock this stuff down. Who owns liability? These things are used hard, they break frequently -- especially with age. How to you know something actually works right if you don&#x27;t lock down the repair process?

If John Deere were being honest they wouldn&#x27;t sell tractors, but lease them with the cost of repair built into the yearly fee. If &quot;parts and repairs are up to six times more profitable than selling the equipment itself&quot; eventually they will ruin their brand and people will purchase other brands.

I have the feeling someone will become very rich by buying up all the old used diesel trucks in the world and keeping them going when EVs take over the world in 4 years.

Not just farmers and tractors eh?<p>Perhaps we should push beyond merely protecting the right to repair, but figuring out how to incentivize standardization and open protocols.

In the end market should take of this. If repairability is a major concern for the farmers they would just eventually buy the tractors with less of a high-tech bells and whistles. And also cheaper I guess.

There is a lot of misinformation about this. At face value, articles like this imply you&#x27;re not able or allowed to fix mechanical issues, how dare they!<p>What they don&#x27;t mention is that manufacturers protect their electronic gear i.e. the consoles inside the machine that use GPS to run a field, adjust the attachment acccording to various sensors etc. This is very sophisticated stuff, and farmers need and want this functionality.<p>Farmers aren&#x27;t wanting their old 1950s-era tractors back. They want more control over the software -- and in particular don&#x27;t want to pay for it. And while as an open source type myself I&#x27;m sympathetic to this, I&#x27;m suspicious about the outright bullshit in articles like this.