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Farmer here - 200 head of grass fed cattle plus hay operation. Just to be clear, the problem described in the article does not affect many (probably most) farm

Farmer here - 200 head of grass fed cattle plus hay operation. Just to be clear, the problem described in the article does not affect many (probably most) farmers; it primarily affects large scale grain operations that have harvest combines that use a lot of onboard computers. It's a bit dramatic to frame this as "US farmers are being bled". Guys who grow grain on huge farms in the Midwest are not happy about the implications of the TOS they signed with Deere when they, grownups who can read, bought their tractors a few years ago. There, fixed the headline for you.

LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Is there an alternative where they don't sign an equivalent TOS and still get the same features? Perhaps they have to pay for the privilege? Or is this a unilateral power grab by the manufacturers?
- leroy_masochist 7y ago
  Midwest grain farmers are super boxed in with regard to what they must sign in order to have access to the latest tractor technology for their specific crop, but that's happening within the context of the technology getting incrementally better year-by-year, i.e., continuously cheaper input costs per unit of crop yield. This is all somewhat par for the course for a highly commoditized industry. Also, check out the comment below from the child of the Deere engineer who makes the point that "liability is the enemy of automation". If you gave farmers the ability to hack their tractors you are opening a bunch of complicated issues.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Why do they need the latest tractor technology? Amazingly, people used to survive using tractors without air conditioning. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990. Plenty of Deere competitors can beat that.
    - brianwawok 7y ago
      How much lower profit margin will you accept? If the guy next to you can harvest twice as fast as you, how are you covering that extra harvest driver pay?
      - lostlogin 7y ago
        By not playing for the new harvester.
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      Who needs the latest computer technology? Amazingly, people used to compute by hand. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990s. Plenty of Intel competitors can beat that. ------ Farmers are in a competition for revenues. Better tractor technology growing more food with fewer workers. If all your neighbors are growing 200 bushels whenever you grow 100 bushels, you're going to die. AWS simply won't be competitive with 90s era computers. Modern farmers won't work with tech designed in the 90s either. Sure, farming might be slower than computers at advancing, but its the same general thing. Computers (and tractors) are durable goods, they can last 20 years if you need them to. In practice, people replace durable goods regularly, because the NEW model is that much better than the old model. So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same. The group with superior technology will get superior revenue at lower ongoing costs. For computers, that's less power-usage for the same amount of computations (requests per second or whatever). For farmers, that's fewer workers picking your fields for the same amount of crop.
      - wglb 7y ago
        > So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same This totally leaves out the risk factor of not finishing harvest in time. In northern climates, if you don't finish, for example, by early September, the remaining crop may be unharvestable. Thus you could lose half your crop, totally. So the economics are not at all the same.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > Is there an alternative where they don't sign an equivalent TOS and still get the same features? I mean, the clear alternative is to buy tractors without the same features. I'm not sure why manufacturers are obligated to sell certain features without a TOS. > Or is this a unilateral power grab by the manufacturers? How is this a power grab? That would only be true if the only tractor manufacturer in the world is John Deere.
  - vajrabum 7y ago
    Can you legally fix your car or your older tractor? Has that always been true? You can't legally fix these machines because the manufacturer says so. That's new(ish) and a power (money) grab.
    - the_pwner224 7y ago
      This doesn't just prevent fixing - it prevents modification. If I want to change something about my car or motorcycle or tractor or airplane I should damn well be able to (assuming the modifications comply with all laws, which is not the issue here). Other comments say that these tractors are always purchased with a loan, in which case the loan provider (and insurance companies) can make stipulations about the usage and maintenance of the tractors. And perhaps John Deere can help enforce those. But for them to just put a unilateral blanket ban on modifying their equipment is wrong. If they have a monopoly it is an abuse of power and should be punished; if they don't then the market will fix the issue itself, for example via farmers complaining and then not buying from them any more.
    - nordsieck 7y ago
      > Can you legally fix your car or your older tractor? Has that always been true? You can't legally fix these machines because the manufacturer says so. That's new(ish) and a power (money) grab. Contracts that limit your ability to do things are very common. If you buy a pure bred dog, you will typically be required to sign a contract that requires you to not breed it and to get it neutered after a certain period of time. If for some reason you need to give it up, you will have to return it to the breeder. If you buy a movie on DVD, you can enjoy it in your home, but you can't set up an impromptu theater by projecting the movie on the side of a building. The import thing, was the customer provided notice of this restriction at or before the time of sale. It sounds like the answer to this question is: yes. You may be tempted to to claim some sort of power imbalance, which I don't buy in the general case, but in this particular case it is even less relevant. Large farms that use automated machinery costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars is the very definition of sophisticated customer, capable of hiring legal help and evaluating options.
- JoblessWonder 7y ago
  This is just the industry trying to move towards a "tractor as a service" model which allows them to continue charging regular fees and offset the feast/famine of only having large up-front sales cycles.
BearOso 7y ago
Exactly—people need to know that there’s a spectrum of farmers, and they’re all very different. For instance, big commercial grain farmers like to convolute themselves with the family farmer when protesting laws that affect their bottom line. Things like proper buffering laws to preserve water quality aren’t going to affect anybody but the big conglomerates that want to abuse every square inch of their land for profit.
OrgNet 7y ago
"Only affects a few" is not a really good argument... just wait until they come for you...
- leroy_masochist 7y ago
  They can come for me all they want, my tractors don't have advanced control systems and won't for the foreseeable future
  - SECProto 7y ago
    I've got some family that run a dairy farm, similar scale to yours. I don't speak for them, but: They're getting older, and have trouble finding help with the labour: it's (obviously) in a rural area, which has been depopulating for decades. They can't get the high schoolers out during haying season nearly as easily as they used to do. They rely on 40 year old cousins come up for a weekend here and there to help load some bales/wrap some silage. Their farm will likely go one of two ways: - Shut when they retire (the land is too marginal for a big dairy to want it) - Be taken over by the one cousin with interest. If the latter, the labor pool is still an issue. The only way it would work out is if advanced tech comes in like what you've described. So the issue will affect farms your size/type, just not for another decade or two. Ignoring it as "nope, doesn't affect me!" seems just a little... short sighted to me. Thoughts?
    - leroy_masochist 7y ago
      The challenge of getting documented farm labor in rural areas is massive and we face that ourselves, and tractor software lock-in is neither a potential exacerbating factor nor a potential future solution to this problem. Not sure if I understand your question?
      - SECProto 7y ago
        I'm picturing self-driving tractors as a labour-saver during the busiest time of year (haying). It would be a relatively simple technical problem to solve, and I could see manufacturers going for the market (and locking down the system at the same time - same as Tesla and Deere).
toufka 7y ago
But "grain farms in the Midwest" is actually is a lot of people. Statistically, soybean farmers have almost the same tonnage output as cattle in the US, and corn is 4x that - so those "grain farmers" are a significant chunk of US farming. And that is significant source of livelihood (and culture) for people in the midwest. Sure, different people think of different kinds of farmers when they hear the word, "farmer", however, for a sizable chunk of the US, that does actually mean grain (corn/soybeans) farmers. And even 'smaller' operations have to upgrade their (shared) equipment at some point.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
EliRivers 7y ago
grownups who can read That's an interesting take. In my experience, a significant proportion of adults who can literally make the right sounds come out of their mouth if asked to read words, and who can have a stab at telling you what any individual word means, nonetheless struggle to put meaning to any lengthy set of the written word beyond their typical day-to-day experiences (tending towards almost 100% of the population when confronted with the standard styles used in some industries). While they can literally read, I think "grownups who can read" implies a fluency in these situations that many don't have.
- leroy_masochist 7y ago
  If you are going to run a farm successfully you need to take personal responsibility for everything that does or doesn't happen on your farm and that definitely applies to the paperwork you sign on your farm's behalf. Furthermore, if you're in the commodity grain business you sign a lot of paperwork. You sign it for your hedging contracts, for your asset financing, for your farm insurance which often has a lot of detailed terms, etc. The idea that the farmers affected by the general issue of tractor software are neophytes when it comes to contracts strikes me as a misleading one.
  - EliRivers 7y ago
    So why did they do it? Do they have no choice? Do Deere and chums have these people over a barrel? Is this some kind of captive market situation, in which farmers know they're being fucked over but have no choice and a union too weak to protect them?
    - leroy_masochist 7y ago
      They consciously choose to buy the tractors that has software with TOS because they perform much, much better for the grain harvesting use case. FWIW, there's undoubtedly some level of "the Deere salesman who was captain of my high school wrestling team when I was a sophomore on JV will be extra nice to me at the Elks Club if I buy the deluxe model" type dynamic going on in a lot of cases. Human factors exist in every rural community, and I'm sure many an unnecessarily fancy tractor has been sold over the years.
leoh 7y ago
Were you paid to write this?
- leroy_masochist 7y ago
  I'm curious to know who you think would have paid me?
  - leoh 7y ago
    PR firm for JD. Looked at your post history after I posted (should have before I posted). You're pretty active here. Sorry to have asked it.
- dang 7y ago
  That's a serious violation of the site guidelines. Would you please review them and stick to the rules when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
captainredbeard 7y ago
Since you're here: where could good software help you run your cattle operation?
- leroy_masochist 7y ago
  A cheap ear tag based tracking system that gives me real time locational awareness of where every cow in the herd is. Ideally low radiation, in other words not looking to put a GSM antenna on every animal A mobile-friendly CRM for managing slaughter schedules and other livestock related stuff, that also incorporates something Asana-like for delegating and tracking farm tasks A predictive analytics platform that takes data from ground-implanted sensors and weather services and does some analysis and gives me input on when we should plan to hay, which I will probably ignore anyway if we're being honest I'll respond again if I think of anything else. Thank you for asking!
  - war1025 7y ago
    A couple guys I went to high school with started a smart-ag business related to livestock tracking. Not sure how it relates to what you do, but seemed potentially related enough to pass along. http://www.performancelivestockanalytics.com/ http://www.performancelivestockanalytics.com/
    - leroy_masochist 7y ago
      Thanks! This looks like a feedlot management tool; we graze cows through pasture and also hay the same fields, so our needs would be a bit different.
  - maliker 7y ago
    Regarding tracking, I work for rural electric utilities, and we're looking at LoRaWAN for tracking. $30 chip, 15+ mile range in rural environments. Plus it's low power (can run for a year on a battery), and it should meet your low radiation requirement since it doesn't transmit often. Just food for thought.
kexx 7y ago
while every word you wrote is probably right, the point here is spotlighting of the latest (or not so, it's been going for while) trend that how big corporations try to take as much control as they can, only for the solely purpose of extorting as much money as they can.

LeifCarrotson 7y ago

Is there an alternative where they don't sign an equivalent TOS and still get the same features? Perhaps they have to pay for the privilege? Or is this a unilateral power grab by the manufacturers?

leroy_masochist 7y ago
Midwest grain farmers are super boxed in with regard to what they must sign in order to have access to the latest tractor technology for their specific crop, but that's happening within the context of the technology getting incrementally better year-by-year, i.e., continuously cheaper input costs per unit of crop yield. This is all somewhat par for the course for a highly commoditized industry. Also, check out the comment below from the child of the Deere engineer who makes the point that "liability is the enemy of automation". If you gave farmers the ability to hack their tractors you are opening a bunch of complicated issues.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Why do they need the latest tractor technology? Amazingly, people used to survive using tractors without air conditioning. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990. Plenty of Deere competitors can beat that.
  - brianwawok 7y ago
    How much lower profit margin will you accept? If the guy next to you can harvest twice as fast as you, how are you covering that extra harvest driver pay?
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      By not playing for the new harvester.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    Who needs the latest computer technology? Amazingly, people used to compute by hand. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990s. Plenty of Intel competitors can beat that. ------ Farmers are in a competition for revenues. Better tractor technology growing more food with fewer workers. If all your neighbors are growing 200 bushels whenever you grow 100 bushels, you're going to die. AWS simply won't be competitive with 90s era computers. Modern farmers won't work with tech designed in the 90s either. Sure, farming might be slower than computers at advancing, but its the same general thing. Computers (and tractors) are durable goods, they can last 20 years if you need them to. In practice, people replace durable goods regularly, because the NEW model is that much better than the old model. So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same. The group with superior technology will get superior revenue at lower ongoing costs. For computers, that's less power-usage for the same amount of computations (requests per second or whatever). For farmers, that's fewer workers picking your fields for the same amount of crop.
    - wglb 7y ago
      > So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same This totally leaves out the risk factor of not finishing harvest in time. In northern climates, if you don't finish, for example, by early September, the remaining crop may be unharvestable. Thus you could lose half your crop, totally. So the economics are not at all the same.
nordsieck 7y ago
> Is there an alternative where they don't sign an equivalent TOS and still get the same features? I mean, the clear alternative is to buy tractors without the same features. I'm not sure why manufacturers are obligated to sell certain features without a TOS. > Or is this a unilateral power grab by the manufacturers? How is this a power grab? That would only be true if the only tractor manufacturer in the world is John Deere.
- vajrabum 7y ago
  Can you legally fix your car or your older tractor? Has that always been true? You can't legally fix these machines because the manufacturer says so. That's new(ish) and a power (money) grab.
  - the_pwner224 7y ago
    This doesn't just prevent fixing - it prevents modification. If I want to change something about my car or motorcycle or tractor or airplane I should damn well be able to (assuming the modifications comply with all laws, which is not the issue here). Other comments say that these tractors are always purchased with a loan, in which case the loan provider (and insurance companies) can make stipulations about the usage and maintenance of the tractors. And perhaps John Deere can help enforce those. But for them to just put a unilateral blanket ban on modifying their equipment is wrong. If they have a monopoly it is an abuse of power and should be punished; if they don't then the market will fix the issue itself, for example via farmers complaining and then not buying from them any more.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > Can you legally fix your car or your older tractor? Has that always been true? You can't legally fix these machines because the manufacturer says so. That's new(ish) and a power (money) grab. Contracts that limit your ability to do things are very common. If you buy a pure bred dog, you will typically be required to sign a contract that requires you to not breed it and to get it neutered after a certain period of time. If for some reason you need to give it up, you will have to return it to the breeder. If you buy a movie on DVD, you can enjoy it in your home, but you can't set up an impromptu theater by projecting the movie on the side of a building. The import thing, was the customer provided notice of this restriction at or before the time of sale. It sounds like the answer to this question is: yes. You may be tempted to to claim some sort of power imbalance, which I don't buy in the general case, but in this particular case it is even less relevant. Large farms that use automated machinery costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars is the very definition of sophisticated customer, capable of hiring legal help and evaluating options.
JoblessWonder 7y ago
This is just the industry trying to move towards a "tractor as a service" model which allows them to continue charging regular fees and offset the feast/famine of only having large up-front sales cycles.

BearOso 7y ago

Exactly—people need to know that there’s a spectrum of farmers, and they’re all very different. For instance, big commercial grain farmers like to convolute themselves with the family farmer when protesting laws that affect their bottom line. Things like proper buffering laws to preserve water quality aren’t going to affect anybody but the big conglomerates that want to abuse every square inch of their land for profit.

OrgNet 7y ago

"Only affects a few" is not a really good argument... just wait until they come for you...

leroy_masochist 7y ago
They can come for me all they want, my tractors don't have advanced control systems and won't for the foreseeable future
- SECProto 7y ago
  I've got some family that run a dairy farm, similar scale to yours. I don't speak for them, but: They're getting older, and have trouble finding help with the labour: it's (obviously) in a rural area, which has been depopulating for decades. They can't get the high schoolers out during haying season nearly as easily as they used to do. They rely on 40 year old cousins come up for a weekend here and there to help load some bales/wrap some silage. Their farm will likely go one of two ways: - Shut when they retire (the land is too marginal for a big dairy to want it) - Be taken over by the one cousin with interest. If the latter, the labor pool is still an issue. The only way it would work out is if advanced tech comes in like what you've described. So the issue will affect farms your size/type, just not for another decade or two. Ignoring it as "nope, doesn't affect me!" seems just a little... short sighted to me. Thoughts?
  - leroy_masochist 7y ago
    The challenge of getting documented farm labor in rural areas is massive and we face that ourselves, and tractor software lock-in is neither a potential exacerbating factor nor a potential future solution to this problem. Not sure if I understand your question?
    - SECProto 7y ago
      I'm picturing self-driving tractors as a labour-saver during the busiest time of year (haying). It would be a relatively simple technical problem to solve, and I could see manufacturers going for the market (and locking down the system at the same time - same as Tesla and Deere).

toufka 7y ago

But "grain farms in the Midwest" is actually is a lot of people. Statistically, soybean farmers have almost the same tonnage output as cattle in the US, and corn is 4x that - so those "grain farmers" are a significant chunk of US farming. And that is significant source of livelihood (and culture) for people in the midwest. Sure, different people think of different kinds of farmers when they hear the word, "farmer", however, for a sizable chunk of the US, that does actually mean grain (corn/soybeans) farmers. And even 'smaller' operations have to upgrade their (shared) equipment at some point.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

EliRivers 7y ago

grownups who can read That's an interesting take. In my experience, a significant proportion of adults who can literally make the right sounds come out of their mouth if asked to read words, and who can have a stab at telling you what any individual word means, nonetheless struggle to put meaning to any lengthy set of the written word beyond their typical day-to-day experiences (tending towards almost 100% of the population when confronted with the standard styles used in some industries). While they can literally read, I think "grownups who can read" implies a fluency in these situations that many don't have.

leroy_masochist 7y ago
If you are going to run a farm successfully you need to take personal responsibility for everything that does or doesn't happen on your farm and that definitely applies to the paperwork you sign on your farm's behalf. Furthermore, if you're in the commodity grain business you sign a lot of paperwork. You sign it for your hedging contracts, for your asset financing, for your farm insurance which often has a lot of detailed terms, etc. The idea that the farmers affected by the general issue of tractor software are neophytes when it comes to contracts strikes me as a misleading one.
- EliRivers 7y ago
  So why did they do it? Do they have no choice? Do Deere and chums have these people over a barrel? Is this some kind of captive market situation, in which farmers know they're being fucked over but have no choice and a union too weak to protect them?
  - leroy_masochist 7y ago
    They consciously choose to buy the tractors that has software with TOS because they perform much, much better for the grain harvesting use case. FWIW, there's undoubtedly some level of "the Deere salesman who was captain of my high school wrestling team when I was a sophomore on JV will be extra nice to me at the Elks Club if I buy the deluxe model" type dynamic going on in a lot of cases. Human factors exist in every rural community, and I'm sure many an unnecessarily fancy tractor has been sold over the years.

leoh 7y ago

Were you paid to write this?

leroy_masochist 7y ago
I'm curious to know who you think would have paid me?
- leoh 7y ago
  PR firm for JD. Looked at your post history after I posted (should have before I posted). You're pretty active here. Sorry to have asked it.
dang 7y ago
That's a serious violation of the site guidelines. Would you please review them and stick to the rules when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

captainredbeard 7y ago

Since you're here: where could good software help you run your cattle operation?

leroy_masochist 7y ago
A cheap ear tag based tracking system that gives me real time locational awareness of where every cow in the herd is. Ideally low radiation, in other words not looking to put a GSM antenna on every animal A mobile-friendly CRM for managing slaughter schedules and other livestock related stuff, that also incorporates something Asana-like for delegating and tracking farm tasks A predictive analytics platform that takes data from ground-implanted sensors and weather services and does some analysis and gives me input on when we should plan to hay, which I will probably ignore anyway if we're being honest I'll respond again if I think of anything else. Thank you for asking!
- war1025 7y ago
  A couple guys I went to high school with started a smart-ag business related to livestock tracking. Not sure how it relates to what you do, but seemed potentially related enough to pass along. http://www.performancelivestockanalytics.com/ http://www.performancelivestockanalytics.com/
  - leroy_masochist 7y ago
    Thanks! This looks like a feedlot management tool; we graze cows through pasture and also hay the same fields, so our needs would be a bit different.
- maliker 7y ago
  Regarding tracking, I work for rural electric utilities, and we're looking at LoRaWAN for tracking. $30 chip, 15+ mile range in rural environments. Plus it's low power (can run for a year on a battery), and it should meet your low radiation requirement since it doesn't transmit often. Just food for thought.

kexx 7y ago

while every word you wrote is probably right, the point here is spotlighting of the latest (or not so, it's been going for while) trend that how big corporations try to take as much control as they can, only for the solely purpose of extorting as much money as they can.