38 ms·

Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

595 points by anandaverma18 5y ago

beckman466 5y ago
> 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. > 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. > 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. This is a part of a larger pattern. Our current underlying system "keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits". The current system enables "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" [1]. Imagine today'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. [1] http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-new-civilization-centered-around-sustenance-commons http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-ne...
- antibuddy 5y ago
  On the other hand the incentive for people to innovate and make it accessible to anyone is often money. The criticism of capitalism is warranted, however the supposedly bad capitalist IP system is also the reason for innovation and cooperation.
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    Most of the interesting innovations happen on publicly funded research. Whether it’s your RNA vaccine https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/darpa-awards-moderna-therapeutics-grant-25-million-develop/ https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d... or your phones touch screen, or your siri voice assistant or your uber gps taxi
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      > Most of the interesting innovations happen on publicly funded research Excluding airplanes, jet engines, rockets, transistors, git, etc.
      - devdas 5y ago
        Rockets were publicly funded research. A lot of airplane research was publicly funded.
        WalterBright 5y ago
        Goddard was not publicly funded. The Langley prototype fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement, and cost 20 times in government funding what the Wrights spent on their entire R+D program. Langley clearly had not solved any of the problems necessary for controlled, powered flight.
  - louis___ 5y ago
    This rethoric has been proven false in the software development ecosystem. Nowadays almost all new programming languages are open-source, and *nix OS softwares have won the cultural battle over Windows in the devops community. > the supposedly bad capitalist IP system is also the reason for innovation and cooperation For me this is as much a myth as the good old "the wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor"
- brobdingnagians 5y ago
  Are the technological advancements in tractors really worth it? Does anyone have any stats on this? I imagine tractors two decades ago did the job about the same. Is adding a whole bunch of chips to something for a very minor increase in efficiency worth losing the ability to repair it easily. If it is anything like cars, then I would think the technology increases chance of failure and actually just increases the cost of doing business; especially when they have to wait to do simple things. Cars 40 years ago did just fine getting from A to B, had air conditioning, radio, and worked reliably. Cars now are finicky, spy on you, and very expensive to repair. It makes me wonder if we would just be better off with not flooding everything with chips. Does connecting your car to your phone really improve your life? I don't think it would improve mine. If anything, I'm trying to connect my phone to _less_ things than I used to because it just steals my attention from things that really matter.
  - eliaspro 5y ago
    Tractors and farming in general have dramatically changed throughout the last 20 years or so. They've become much bigger in size (and thereby more efficient), they're mostly self-driving once in the field and control now the whole operation very precisely down to centimeter accuracy e.g. for fertilizer application.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    > Does anyone have any stats on this? Yes, every farmer in the US who is serious (that is no small hobby farmers). If the GPS is broken they won't bring the planter out in the field. Technology allows them to put exactly the right amount of seed in the ground at the right place. They saves thousands of dollars every year just by not planting too much. Then get tens of thousands more every year because the right amount of seeds results in more yield (profit) than either too much (plants have to fight each other for sun) or too little (bare ground doesn't produce a harvest). Farmers are still figuring out to turn other data into profit, but they are learning that some soils just never will yield well no matter how much fertilizer they put on so they don't waste money on them, while others with a little extra fertilizer will yield more. The computer lets them easily adjust fertilizer levels for each small section of land.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  I like this line of thinking, but I don't like the grand theory aspects of it. Terms like "current political economy." Explaining everything, from poverty to environmental degradation, as a product of psycho-societal ideas like the "false idea of material abundance." It might work as a method of criticism, but I don't think it works the other way. We need to discover and develop new ways, and that doesn't tend to work from highly broad, abstract understandings down to the practical level. I agree with most of the major touchpoints, but I think it could be written better.^ To hazard an inexact term, this needs to be far less ideological. Take this paragraph: We believe that new forms of cooperative and distributed property will emerge along these lines, a trend explained by Matt Cropp in his article, “The Coming Micro-Ownership Revolution.”6 Cropp’s article explains the direct link between P2P-driven declines in transaction costs and the shift to more distributed forms of ownership. The new corporate forms will no longer be based on shareholder-based ownership, but on common capital stock, held by the commoners themselves. These new entities constitute the “third commons” of “created materiality,” i.e., humankind’s productive machinery (in other words, capital), which joins the first two commons, the inherited material commons of nature and created “immaterial” cultural commons. The new forms of distributed individual property, which can be freely aggregated into collectives, emulate the free aggregation... The author believes this because its a highly legible, direct application of the ideas and analysis. It has the disadvantage of being both limiting, and nonspecific. Hard to use as a formula, and easy to use for rejection. I'm totally on board with OSS/Linux & Wikimedia as existence proofs. I would also add the WWW. OSS and its ecosystems are a rich set of smaller examples. I think lichess makes a great example, somewhat similar to wikimedia. Note that Jimmy Wales is more of a capitalist/libertarian, in his ideals. He would (I assume) be totally off put by this article's take. Thibault Duplessis, Lichess' founder, describes himself as a french communist. CVince Serf is just a dude. TimBL is more of a moderate pragmatist. Good look finding a take on "contemporary capitalism" that appeals to all three. Why carry all this unnecessary baggage. ^More practical, convincing to the unconvinced, more room to graft on other ideas, less combative, less offensive to pre-xistsing political identities....
- GuB-42 5y ago
  In fact, the pattern is that people don't want to spend a lot of money upfront and companies like sustained income. So given the choice between a $50k tractor which cannot be repaired unless you pay a lot of money and an easy to repair $100k tractor, both farmers and manufacturers will chose the first option. Of course, farmers want an easy to repair $50k tractor, but manufacturers have to make money. And manufacturers want to sell $100k expensive-to-maintain tractors, but competition won't let them. The system we have now, with all its flaws, is one that suits people the most. We can make laws when the free market doesn't work, for example, we could make $50k unmaintainable tractors illegal, which I think would be great, but it will piss off farmers who will need to pay $100k for their tractors and it will piss off manufacturers who will lose their steady income. > Imagine today's high-tech world, without the capitalist intellectual property system. No need to imagine, we have China, and before that, we had USSR. Not perfect examples, especially for China, but these are the real world alternatives to capitalism.
  - sequesteredmar 5y ago
    It isn't about maintenance itself, it's limiting that maintenance to the manufacturer only artificially where it could be done by anyone.
  - msrenee 5y ago
    I'm not sure how I'm supposed to have any kind of sympathy for a manufacturer who wants to offer a worse product for more money. Especially when that directly translates to higher food costs for everyone. I'm not saying communism is the answer, but a free market where your choices are a crappy "cheap" product or an acceptable product for twice the price isn't something to be proud of. Oh, the market will solve the problem. Well this is what the market has produced, so that means this is the best possible option. It's like some kind of religion. If this is what the market has decided, then it must be the best thing and we have no right to question it.
    - GuB-42 5y ago
      By the option that suits people the most, I didn't mean "best". The free market is actually a science, and the "invisible hand of the market" is formalized by game theory. And it often result in optimal solutions, but not always. The prisoner's dilemma is the best-known counter-example. There is mathematical proof that a free market is not perfect, but currently, in practice and when supplemented by relatively light regulation, that's the best we have. As for the choice, you can't have good and cheap, it is not about being proud of something, it is just how things are. Legislation can just remove the choice. For example, you are not allowed to buy a car so cheap that it is going to kill you and the environment, which is a good thing. But because of that, you are forced to pay "twice the price", you just don't notice it because the cheap option is simply not available.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The DRM in these tractors doesn't really depend on any IP laws. There's probably some restriction on reverse engineering it, but for a relatively low volume market with difficult to manufacture hardware parts, there's not going to be all that much interest in overcoming DRM even if there weren't laws.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
    DMCA. Breaking even the shittiest DRM is illegal. This of course kills incentives to break DRM from the commercial side as nobody can make any money off it without getting sued. Otherwise I imagine some 3rd party part manufacturer would attempt it.
    - saurik 5y ago
      Even if it weren't illegal, we are rapidly entering an era where it won't be practical anyway: I work directly on these issues--participating in the DMCA exemption process every cycle and serving as a witness during the hearings--and the whole process just feels kind of dumb knowing that "sure, so let's say it is legal to jailbreak your tractor: they still have to make a mistake in a world where bootloaders are becoming increasingly reliable" :(.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        The DMCA is the least of your worries. The EPA has figured out that the only only reason people actually want to update software on their tractors is to turn off emissions controls.
        LgWoodenBadger 5y ago
        Manufacturers of higher-powered diesel tractors have had to introduce features to allow for regen cycles to be postponed, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all
        5y ago
infopedia 5y ago
Tractors are billion dollar market and who care of farmers in front of these Tech Giants....
MikeUt 5y ago
> 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.” So a company selling seeds (with a no-reselling clause in their contracts) could buy that information, make a good guess at a farmer's profit margin, and individually adjust their pricing to the maximum that each farmer would be willing to pay. Yet another way in which big players can abuse information asymmetry.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Yet another way in which big players can abuse information asymmetry. Solution here is to not allow for the asymmetry. So much of society’s ills are caused by incentives to keep information asymmetric, so that market participants cannot make optimal (to all) informed decisions.
sackerhews 5y ago
Making something that only you can repair can be quite a lucrative business. This documentary is quite interesting: McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
- mhb 5y ago
  Or maybe not. Extensive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774
  - gruez 5y ago
    Yeah, the non-sinister explanation is that mcdonalds decided to go with a self-cleaning machine to reduce the possibility of workers messing up the cleaning cycle, taylor implementing that badly, and no one else using self-clean machines.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    McDonalds has very strong incentives to reduce labour costs to zero. This started with very clear & limited roles which meant cheap rates, but now means reducing the number of employees. At $5/hour it's cheaper to train and manage people to do the job; @ > $15/hr you can justify an army of machines and a few technicians, even if your ice cream machine seems to be broken a lot of the time.
    - shagie 5y ago
      If you poke at McD's corporate jobs in IT, you'll find a bunch of jobs in machine learning, audio processing and similar for an AI drive through project. https://careers.mcdonalds.com/global-corporate/jobs?categories=Information%20Technology&page=1&limit=100 https://careers.mcdonalds.com/global-corporate/jobs?categori... Many of the tech positions have been filled (from what they were a year ago)... though still more than a few.
- atoav 5y ago
  Making something only you can repair lands you on my personal everlasting blacklist of shame (and I guess the everlasting blacklists of shame of others as well).
redis_mlc 5y ago
For all the romantic HN faux farmers: Dealer repair cost is only one factor, and not the largest. During harvest season, every operating hour is worth thousands of dollars to get the crop in, so onsite self-repair is critical at that time.
Glavnokoman 5y ago
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.
- zwirbl 5y ago
  It should, but will it? The magically all-mighty market does not fix all problems without intervention
  - Glavnokoman 5y ago
    It probably won't. But that does not dismiss that it should :).
- nspattak 5y ago
  This is an oversimplification that overlooks at automotive engineering history (if not history in general). Are there 2T engines or Wankel engines available for people to choose?
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Heavy regulation of the automotive industry is why I can't buy a new Dodge Coronet.
- patrickmclaren 5y ago
  Can you expand on how this would come to be, in practice?
  - apples_oranges 5y ago
    Well, it's not that hard to imagine, is it? Someone founds a company that produces tractors but they are simpler, cheaper and can be repaired. If that's what customers want, they _will_ gain market share. If not, then the demand isn't there.
w3news 5y ago
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. But i think the same problem is for cars, you cannot e.g. repair your Tesla everywhere, this is also very closed.
- hans1729 5y ago
  >But i think the same problem is for cars, you cannot e.g. repair your Tesla everywhere, this is also very closed. The repairment-strategy for Teslas in Germany seems to be pretty simple. You just buy a new one :-)
petewailes 5y ago
Background: grew up in farming communities, live in a farming community, almost everyone around us farms. 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. Deere is the worst in this, but the rest of the industry isn't anywhere near as good as it should be. There's a reason you see old Defenders, Fourtraks, Rangers, Hiluxes and their ilk around so much on farms. They'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're basically screwed. I've no problem with the hardware getting more advanced, but that same maintainability needs to be baked in. The problem is, no-one seems interested in shaking things up there, and the manufacturers aren't in any hurry to change. They're a conservative bunch who don't need to, and for whom it's directly more profitable to make machines which can't be repaired by anyone other than themselves and people they authorise.
- majjam 5y ago
  Probably a naive question, but arent new Kubota tractors more repairable than say, a John Deere? Or are they just as bad?
  - petewailes 5y ago
    It's a sliding scale. There's better and worse, but no-one's making open software systems which are generally available to be evaluated, updated and fixed, and the hardware side isn't much better. Sure, a Kubota, Belarus, or JCB is better than a Massey or John Deere, but none are as good as they should be.
  - mikey_p 5y ago
    They aren't comparable in technology (lots of farmers want GPS, auto steer, etc) and they definitely don't compete on size and power. Kubota tops out around 200 horsepower and Deere offers tractors up into the 600+ range.
- sumedh 5y ago
  What about Mahindra tractors, they are pretty big in India and they sell in US as well.
dncornholio 5y ago
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? 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..
- tim333 5y ago
  Apple's not that bad really. Typed from an 8 year old Apple with replaced battery, ssd and keyboard.
  - simion314 5y ago
    But can you have it replaced for cheap on a new model? Nobody said that you can't pay Apple a big amount of money so they fix your stuff, the issue is that in newer devices it is getting harder to repair the devices using an independent service(not everyone has the money or lives near an Apple store). Apple can just not fuck with this independent people, let them have access to the same repair documentation and parts their own people have access.
    - dncornholio 5y ago
      Apple is actively disabling people to even change their battery. Same type of battery wont work in another same type macbook anymore..
      - tim333 5y ago
        Ah. That's bad.
  - syshum 5y ago
    Search Louis Rossman if you really believe that Apple is the poster child for hostility to independent repair
  - swiley 5y ago
buro9 5y ago
No-one wants to sell hardware any longer, it's not as profitable as providing it on a subscription (dare we say "rent") and forcing all support, maintenance and additions to go through your channels as part of the subscription package. Unfortunately this trend is everywhere now. It happened to servers, media, has started to happen to cars... but it's happened already to agricultural hardware. 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.
- willtim 5y ago
  The flipside to this, is that there is perhaps no longer an incentive to sell hardware with a limited lifespan.
  - liaukovv 5y ago
    Thats the point though isn't it, they dont sell it anymore. So any gains in lifespan are reaped by the company, not consumer
    - willtim 5y ago
      Hopefully more durable products means less landfill and digging up the planet looking for more raw materials. This ultimately benefits everybody.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      As long as there are competing suppliers (not colluding), they would compete to sell at lowest price.
  - teachingassist 5y ago
    The opposite, surely. If there's no market for old hardware, there's no benefit to making new products which hold their value.
    - rahkiin 5y ago
the_biot 5y ago
There is a lot of misinformation about this. At face value, articles like this imply you're not able or allowed to fix mechanical issues, how dare they! What they don'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. Farmers aren't wanting their old 1950s-era tractors back. They want more control over the software -- and in particular don't want to pay for it. And while as an open source type myself I'm sympathetic to this, I'm suspicious about the outright bullshit in articles like this.
- taurath 5y ago
  They want to be able to make adjustments, and fix mechanical issues without the whole thing shutting down and then having to take it to the one place in town that is allowed to touch the thing. It’s one thing to say oh only the new stuff is locked down, but every part of the vehicle is, something that wasn’t the case a short while ago. In fact they’re digitizing controls and simple mechanical functionality that doesnt need to be digitized so they can abuse their maintenance monopoly.
- haspok 5y ago
  > in particular don't want to pay for it This is a complete misunderstanding of the problem, also, a false statement in most cases. People would like to have the option to choose who, when, where and how repairs their stuff. If the only option is the manufacturer - even after the warranty period -, then that's called a monopoly and is guaranteed to result in lower standards and higher prices and reduced availability. It is one thing to have such a problem with a laptop or a mobile, because those are relatively cheap items that are easy to replace. But if you have equipment that your livelihood depends on worth tens of thousands of dollars, then this is completely unacceptable.
  - lbriner 5y ago
    It's not called a monopoly. A monopoly is a single provider of a particular service or product allowing the supplier to abuse their position. These farmers do not have to buy John Deere. If they don't like being tied in, they shouldn't have bought the equipment in the first place and chosen a rival then one of two things happen 1) John Deere realise they have been caught with their pants down and change their policy to win customers back 2) Farmers realise there is a new normal where the equipment is simply too complicated to allow them to tinker with it (or at least without losing any manufacturers guarantee).
FractalParadigm 5y ago
I just want to throw my 2¢ out there, as a mid-20's who went to a high-rural-population high school, there's an entire new generation of farmers who have a) accepted that Deere's need constant/regular service calls, and b) don'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's the same reason why a lot of trucking companies lease their trucks or warehouses lease their forklifts, it's generally cheaper and less of a headache overall. I've tried to make pleas with some of my old friends who've complained about the locked-down nature of their JD equipment, explaining that other companies like Kubota don't have that same limitation, but the branding is just too strong ("the Kubota might be cheaper to buy, and cheaper to run, and I can easily maintain it myself, but, it's not a John Deere" - actual quote from a SW Ontario farmer)
- _the_inflator 5y ago
  Fixing would mean hacking in this case.
- _wldu 5y ago
  The issue is really about freedom. If you don't care that a company can decide whether or not you may farm, then rent their equipment. If you do care, then you want 100% control of that equipment. Or as close to 100% as you can get. It's sort of comparable to writing software in C (an ISO standard with many open source compilers) to run on your commodity x86 hardware versus writing an iOS Apple Store app. In one case, you have almost complete control of the HW and SW, in the other, you have no control and can be prevented from doing so at any moment for any reason.
  - DubiousPusher 5y ago
    It's not that simple. There are features of these high end tractors such as automation and satellite guidance that allow you to change the scale of your operation. In a sense, you have to make a choice about what kind of business you're going to be at the same time as you're choosing your equipment.
    - 5y ago
_wldu 5y ago
Old tractors are bringing top dollar at auctions (and have been for some time now). IMO, the same thing will happen with old cars/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/needing to repair them. Late 80s and early 90s Toyotas will be sold at a premium as will any/all old Ford F-150 trucks.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  In the year 2121, the Toyota Hilux will still be the go-to choice for aspiring warlords. The difference is that they may have competition from Americans who want a repairable vehicle.
  - noisy_boy 5y ago
    By that yardstick, Thailand will be the richest country on earth in terms of value of cars owned because I have never seen a higher concentration of HiLux cars anywhere else in the world.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  They are not transferable to a new owner after 40 years here by law. If is older the tractor can't be sold, and if sold privately couldn't pass the vehicle inspection test later (that must be passed each six months, if I'm not wrong). Things can be different in your country. The main promoters of this idea are the independent diagnostic car machines makers. For the brand is a lot of risk and possible bad publicity. For the farmer the results can vary. Messing with its electronics could turn the tractor into a pile of garbage. Allowing the owner to mess with safety systems will typically lead to somebody realizing that can delay the repair for some months just inactivating the warning lights. People do the same all the time with car airbags. As farmers typically earn money after the harvest, they could be working for many months with a fake sense of safety. And as people love to brag, this could became quickly a popular option and a big mess
praptak 5y ago
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't think we can fight this with consumer decisions only, it is just too profitable to shakedown consumers like this.
- gerbilly 5y ago
  I agree, and the software additions are mostly useless (lasers, GPS etc...). The primary reason the software is there is for vendor lock-in and rent seeking.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
If John Deere were being honest they wouldn't sell tractors, but lease them with the cost of repair built into the yearly fee. If "parts and repairs are up to six times more profitable than selling the equipment itself" eventually they will ruin their brand and people will purchase other brands.
- shagie 5y ago
  That approach might work... if they were leased the same way that airplane engines are - by hours running. ( https://www.rrpf-leasing.com/home https://www.rrpf-leasing.com/home ) If you lease it with a calendar time instead, it would make it uneconomical for either JD (in the case of multiple farms sharing the same equipment and logging #x times more hours on the equipment) or for smaller operators (where JD prices it for the 'its running 7 days a week' when its only running 1 day a week). It would also be necessary to make sure that there's no way to circumvent that running time clock on the devices with 3rd party software.
wscott 5y ago
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.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  oh now that is interesting. And possibly the first real 'privacy' issue I have seen that has serious teeth.
  - Boxxed 5y ago
    Apple/Google and friends have just as much power. Seeing where people are shopping is the same thing -- I bet they had evidence of the decline of malls before anyone else, for instance.
_wldu 5y ago
I wonder why JD does not make a large simple tractor that is mostly mechanical and hydraulic using standard/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.
- libertine 5y ago
  That would be a proof of concept that their current practices aren't justified, not only from a marketing standpoint but probably also from a legal standpoint. The problem isn't providing replacement parts. I think the issue is that locking their customers in their maintenance services is part of their business model. Most likely the lifetime of service (decades) wouldn't easily be fitted into the margin of a specific model.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  In a properly-functioning market, it seems as though this would be an opportunity for a competitor. You have to wonder why this isn't happening.
  - saurik 5y ago
    If a competitor figures out how to build a tractor that is as good as the ones from John Deere then they probably can compete with John Deere directly--as in, "on their terms" with a locked down tractor that makes them more margin--rather than bother to sell unlocked tractors. The same issue happens with cell phones: users want control over their phones, but they also want good phones with good screens and good cameras. There are, in fact, phones you can buy that give you complete control, but they are the companies that have shit products and so are trying to use this as a differentiator to draw in a new market. If you are able to compete with the iPhone--like Samsung can, but almost no other manufacturer can (sometimes Google manages to pull it off with first party phones, but very few people buy those, so they are clearly missing something)--then you build a device as equally locked down as the iPhone and compete with it "on Apple's terms" as there is a nearly bottomless well of money that you can extract from users if you are willing to screw them and force them to participate in your closed ecosystem. Essentially, you can't just look at the one product in isolation and think "this should exist from a competitor", as if anyone could easily make a company to go out and do it... you instead have to consider the ecosystem of companies and the numerous barriers to entry (such as patents and limited supply lines and the enormous R&D costs) and what the incentives in the market are, and it turns out that, if your product is one where the competition is already scarce--Apple + Samsung make up 80% of the mobile phone market, with the rest likely targeting people who don't have enough money to pay for high-end phones; there is a similar thing going on with tractors, with five companies controlling >70% of the market, and AFAIK mostly now selling locked down machines--you can't just expect to magically find a competitor pop up that is going to fill this particular interest. If you manage to circumnavigate all of the hurdles to build a phone that works as well as an Apple or a Samsung device, you are almost certainly going to join the oligopoly and lock your device down also, as the incentives are just too poor otherwise. The only fix for this is regulation and, to the extent to which regulation actually already exists here, legal precedent.
po1nt 5y ago
Just don't buy Apple, John Deere or similar products. There are better alternatives and you're getting yourself into a trap where seemingly only government can help you, just because you wanted to buy more prestigious goods.
- zepto 5y ago
  This. When pressed, people end up admitting that the reason they buy these products is that they are better. What they are missing is that they are only better because people buy them, thus funding the improvement of the next generation. If you want open alternatives, buy them. If you want them to get better, campaign for others to buy them. Trying to force companies whose business is based on closed products to do what you want, is not going to go well.
hackbinary 5y ago
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'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) 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.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Most people don’t want to pay more than they have to for things. This phenomenon often intensifies when talking about major inputs to their business.
- checkyoursudo 5y ago
  > They do not want to pay anymore than they have to for anything. Who wants to pay more than they have to? I usually want to pay even less than I have to.
  - hackbinary 5y ago
    There is a difference between dehumanising people and making them feel worthless and negotiating in good faith, and then reneging on agreements.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  > JD is moving to a Tractor as a Service model. Part of the problem here is that in any other sort of <blank>-as-a-service model, you'd be paying MUCH less for the "service" than the <blank>. In this case, you're buying the capital equipment, and then being forced to buy a service contract in order to use it as expected, and keep it running. It'd be like buying an iPhone, needing to rent iCloud storage to make it convenient, not being able to service it (in any meaningful way), and then only being able to run apps from the App Store. Oh, wait. It's the same problem, with the same ethical and moral conundrum. In our society, a lot of us have accepted this deal for a $1,000 phone. However, it's a bit different when you're shelling out upwards of half a million for a modern tractor.
Proven 5y ago
Wut??? They've always had the right to do whatever they want with their property. They don't have the right to ask the manufacturer to honor service and warranty agreement IF they messed with the parts or performed unsupported field repairs. How many more junk articles do we have to read before this sinks in???
bbsimonbb 5y ago
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.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
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.
- mnouquet 5y ago
  Good luck running a electric tractor rig moving 120,000lb (modern quad-track are ~60,000lb, plus the drill, plus the fert/seed cart) all day long...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jdikatz 5y ago
I’m a fan of right to repair, but I think it’s odd to include privacy / 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 / data security. This was the main tack that auto companies took when fighting a recent MA ballot initiative (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Massachusetts_Question_1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Massachusetts_Question_...), and there could be at least some truth to it.
markhahn 5y ago
Not just farmers and tractors eh? Perhaps we should push beyond merely protecting the right to repair, but figuring out how to incentivize standardization and open protocols.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  we got to this point building almost entirely on incentivized standards and open protocols. It's only in the past ~20 years that we've started to replay the telephone company cycle that required the intervention and kicked off the greatest innovation anyone alive has ever seen. I'm not confident that the same governments are prepared to do this again with the current crop of "to big to fail" effective monopolies, which could mean a sea change in global competition.
nimbius 5y ago
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/operators. most farms in America are corporate monoliths. "farmers" 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. 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 a failure condition 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. 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/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.
- gerbilly 5y ago
  > most tractors there are nearly sixty years old. When I worked as a farmhand we were still using some 1950s Massey Ferguson tractors every day. An it's one of the biggest dairy farms in the province (Canada). I mean we had newer stuff too, but the old machines were kept chugging along. I remember opening a sideplate on a MF 135 after one of the kids jammed up the transmission. We got it unstuck with a crowbar, and were up and running again in 15 minutes.
- MisterTea 5y ago
dbg31415 5y ago
Adding to the list of people who grew up on a ranch... 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. And like every bit of equipment on the place had special operation rules. "Don't run that tractor past 5k RPMs" or "Don'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'll blow out." "Remember Tractor J is Brand X, but it has an engine from Brand Z, and a PTO shaft from Brand Y..." Point being, like every piece of equipment was rigged together with duct tape. It'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. Parts from Brand Y in Engine X -- because that'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's not rated for the tractor, but it sort of fits... and it lets you get the job done today... so cool, "works" and then likely just forget about it until it breaks. 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's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs? And, in the case of accidents, even if it's the farmer who is at, the brand suffers from the news report, "A farmer father of 7 was killed today when his John Deere tractor malfunctioned..." Left out of the story is the fact that the farmer didn't repair it to spec, or the guy the farmer bought it from didn't repair it to spec... Anyway I side with John Deere here. It'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't lock down the repair process?
- shagie 5y ago
  > 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's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs? This gets to a very interesting question when it comes to industrial equipment (which farm equipment falls under). Unless there is *VERY CLEAR* instructions not to do it, and the manufacturer made an effort to prevent it, the manufacturer is nearly always liable. (slide 14 https://www.slideserve.com/butch/product-liability-law-in-the-farm-equipment-industry https://www.slideserve.com/butch/product-liability-law-in-th... and also note slide 54 with respect to the liability - the video presentation of this slide deck is at https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY ) Additionally. as you noted, the news that {Brand} equipment broke and killed someone travels much faster and does more impact than the later findings that {Brand} was not at fault because the owner had removed the safety equipment from it.
newdude116 5y ago
I don't find the article anymore, but I read that this is the reason why US farmers were buying Belorussian tractors http://belarus-tractor.com/en/company/news/2016/rare-soviet-era-tractor-sparks-international-interest/ http://belarus-tractor.com/en/company/news/2016/rare-soviet-...
mudpuppydogcow 5y ago
How to create a repair movement https://opencollaboration.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/how-to-create-a-repair-movement/ https://opencollaboration.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/how-to-cr...
calkuta 5y ago
The agreements between tractor makers and tractor buyers are between them are not our business. If there is significant demand for ease of repair, enterprising people will meet that demand.
VMtest 5y ago
Not sure if anybody has mentioned this regarding open source hardware, they are really doing a great job repairing on their own 1. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Main_Page 2. https://youtu.be/hl7lZZP21c8 https://youtu.be/hl7lZZP21c8 | Open Building Institute - Introductory Video 3. https://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose/playlists https://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose/playlists | Marcin Jakubowski 4. https://youtu.be/S63Cy64p2lQ https://youtu.be/S63Cy64p2lQ | Civilization starter kit | Marcin Jakubowski | TEDxKC

595 points by anandaverma18 5y ago

> 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. > 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. > 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. This is a part of a larger pattern. Our current underlying system "keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits". The current system enables "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" [1]. Imagine today'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. [1] http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-new-civilization-centered-around-sustenance-commons http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-ne...

antibuddy 5y ago
On the other hand the incentive for people to innovate and make it accessible to anyone is often money. The criticism of capitalism is warranted, however the supposedly bad capitalist IP system is also the reason for innovation and cooperation.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  Most of the interesting innovations happen on publicly funded research. Whether it’s your RNA vaccine https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/darpa-awards-moderna-therapeutics-grant-25-million-develop/ https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d... or your phones touch screen, or your siri voice assistant or your uber gps taxi
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > Most of the interesting innovations happen on publicly funded research Excluding airplanes, jet engines, rockets, transistors, git, etc.
    - devdas 5y ago
      Rockets were publicly funded research. A lot of airplane research was publicly funded.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Goddard was not publicly funded. The Langley prototype fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement, and cost 20 times in government funding what the Wrights spent on their entire R+D program. Langley clearly had not solved any of the problems necessary for controlled, powered flight.
- louis___ 5y ago
  This rethoric has been proven false in the software development ecosystem. Nowadays almost all new programming languages are open-source, and *nix OS softwares have won the cultural battle over Windows in the devops community. > the supposedly bad capitalist IP system is also the reason for innovation and cooperation For me this is as much a myth as the good old "the wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor"
brobdingnagians 5y ago
Are the technological advancements in tractors really worth it? Does anyone have any stats on this? I imagine tractors two decades ago did the job about the same. Is adding a whole bunch of chips to something for a very minor increase in efficiency worth losing the ability to repair it easily. If it is anything like cars, then I would think the technology increases chance of failure and actually just increases the cost of doing business; especially when they have to wait to do simple things. Cars 40 years ago did just fine getting from A to B, had air conditioning, radio, and worked reliably. Cars now are finicky, spy on you, and very expensive to repair. It makes me wonder if we would just be better off with not flooding everything with chips. Does connecting your car to your phone really improve your life? I don't think it would improve mine. If anything, I'm trying to connect my phone to _less_ things than I used to because it just steals my attention from things that really matter.
- eliaspro 5y ago
  Tractors and farming in general have dramatically changed throughout the last 20 years or so. They've become much bigger in size (and thereby more efficient), they're mostly self-driving once in the field and control now the whole operation very precisely down to centimeter accuracy e.g. for fertilizer application.
- bluGill 5y ago
  > Does anyone have any stats on this? Yes, every farmer in the US who is serious (that is no small hobby farmers). If the GPS is broken they won't bring the planter out in the field. Technology allows them to put exactly the right amount of seed in the ground at the right place. They saves thousands of dollars every year just by not planting too much. Then get tens of thousands more every year because the right amount of seeds results in more yield (profit) than either too much (plants have to fight each other for sun) or too little (bare ground doesn't produce a harvest). Farmers are still figuring out to turn other data into profit, but they are learning that some soils just never will yield well no matter how much fertilizer they put on so they don't waste money on them, while others with a little extra fertilizer will yield more. The computer lets them easily adjust fertilizer levels for each small section of land.
dalbasal 5y ago
I like this line of thinking, but I don't like the grand theory aspects of it. Terms like "current political economy." Explaining everything, from poverty to environmental degradation, as a product of psycho-societal ideas like the "false idea of material abundance." It might work as a method of criticism, but I don't think it works the other way. We need to discover and develop new ways, and that doesn't tend to work from highly broad, abstract understandings down to the practical level. I agree with most of the major touchpoints, but I think it could be written better.^ To hazard an inexact term, this needs to be far less ideological. Take this paragraph: We believe that new forms of cooperative and distributed property will emerge along these lines, a trend explained by Matt Cropp in his article, “The Coming Micro-Ownership Revolution.”6 Cropp’s article explains the direct link between P2P-driven declines in transaction costs and the shift to more distributed forms of ownership. The new corporate forms will no longer be based on shareholder-based ownership, but on common capital stock, held by the commoners themselves. These new entities constitute the “third commons” of “created materiality,” i.e., humankind’s productive machinery (in other words, capital), which joins the first two commons, the inherited material commons of nature and created “immaterial” cultural commons. The new forms of distributed individual property, which can be freely aggregated into collectives, emulate the free aggregation... The author believes this because its a highly legible, direct application of the ideas and analysis. It has the disadvantage of being both limiting, and nonspecific. Hard to use as a formula, and easy to use for rejection. I'm totally on board with OSS/Linux & Wikimedia as existence proofs. I would also add the WWW. OSS and its ecosystems are a rich set of smaller examples. I think lichess makes a great example, somewhat similar to wikimedia. Note that Jimmy Wales is more of a capitalist/libertarian, in his ideals. He would (I assume) be totally off put by this article's take. Thibault Duplessis, Lichess' founder, describes himself as a french communist. CVince Serf is just a dude. TimBL is more of a moderate pragmatist. Good look finding a take on "contemporary capitalism" that appeals to all three. Why carry all this unnecessary baggage. ^More practical, convincing to the unconvinced, more room to graft on other ideas, less combative, less offensive to pre-xistsing political identities....
GuB-42 5y ago
In fact, the pattern is that people don't want to spend a lot of money upfront and companies like sustained income. So given the choice between a $50k tractor which cannot be repaired unless you pay a lot of money and an easy to repair $100k tractor, both farmers and manufacturers will chose the first option. Of course, farmers want an easy to repair $50k tractor, but manufacturers have to make money. And manufacturers want to sell $100k expensive-to-maintain tractors, but competition won't let them. The system we have now, with all its flaws, is one that suits people the most. We can make laws when the free market doesn't work, for example, we could make $50k unmaintainable tractors illegal, which I think would be great, but it will piss off farmers who will need to pay $100k for their tractors and it will piss off manufacturers who will lose their steady income. > Imagine today's high-tech world, without the capitalist intellectual property system. No need to imagine, we have China, and before that, we had USSR. Not perfect examples, especially for China, but these are the real world alternatives to capitalism.
- sequesteredmar 5y ago
  It isn't about maintenance itself, it's limiting that maintenance to the manufacturer only artificially where it could be done by anyone.
- msrenee 5y ago
  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to have any kind of sympathy for a manufacturer who wants to offer a worse product for more money. Especially when that directly translates to higher food costs for everyone. I'm not saying communism is the answer, but a free market where your choices are a crappy "cheap" product or an acceptable product for twice the price isn't something to be proud of. Oh, the market will solve the problem. Well this is what the market has produced, so that means this is the best possible option. It's like some kind of religion. If this is what the market has decided, then it must be the best thing and we have no right to question it.
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    By the option that suits people the most, I didn't mean "best". The free market is actually a science, and the "invisible hand of the market" is formalized by game theory. And it often result in optimal solutions, but not always. The prisoner's dilemma is the best-known counter-example. There is mathematical proof that a free market is not perfect, but currently, in practice and when supplemented by relatively light regulation, that's the best we have. As for the choice, you can't have good and cheap, it is not about being proud of something, it is just how things are. Legislation can just remove the choice. For example, you are not allowed to buy a car so cheap that it is going to kill you and the environment, which is a good thing. But because of that, you are forced to pay "twice the price", you just don't notice it because the cheap option is simply not available.
maxerickson 5y ago
The DRM in these tractors doesn't really depend on any IP laws. There's probably some restriction on reverse engineering it, but for a relatively low volume market with difficult to manufacture hardware parts, there's not going to be all that much interest in overcoming DRM even if there weren't laws.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  DMCA. Breaking even the shittiest DRM is illegal. This of course kills incentives to break DRM from the commercial side as nobody can make any money off it without getting sued. Otherwise I imagine some 3rd party part manufacturer would attempt it.
  - saurik 5y ago
    Even if it weren't illegal, we are rapidly entering an era where it won't be practical anyway: I work directly on these issues--participating in the DMCA exemption process every cycle and serving as a witness during the hearings--and the whole process just feels kind of dumb knowing that "sure, so let's say it is legal to jailbreak your tractor: they still have to make a mistake in a world where bootloaders are becoming increasingly reliable" :(.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      The DMCA is the least of your worries. The EPA has figured out that the only only reason people actually want to update software on their tractors is to turn off emissions controls.
      - LgWoodenBadger 5y ago
        Manufacturers of higher-powered diesel tractors have had to introduce features to allow for regen cycles to be postponed, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all
        5y ago

infopedia 5y ago

Tractors are billion dollar market and who care of farmers in front of these Tech Giants....

MikeUt 5y ago

> 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.” So a company selling seeds (with a no-reselling clause in their contracts) could buy that information, make a good guess at a farmer's profit margin, and individually adjust their pricing to the maximum that each farmer would be willing to pay. Yet another way in which big players can abuse information asymmetry.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Yet another way in which big players can abuse information asymmetry. Solution here is to not allow for the asymmetry. So much of society’s ills are caused by incentives to keep information asymmetric, so that market participants cannot make optimal (to all) informed decisions.

sackerhews 5y ago

Making something that only you can repair can be quite a lucrative business. This documentary is quite interesting: McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

mhb 5y ago
Or maybe not. Extensive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774
- gruez 5y ago
  Yeah, the non-sinister explanation is that mcdonalds decided to go with a self-cleaning machine to reduce the possibility of workers messing up the cleaning cycle, taylor implementing that badly, and no one else using self-clean machines.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  McDonalds has very strong incentives to reduce labour costs to zero. This started with very clear & limited roles which meant cheap rates, but now means reducing the number of employees. At $5/hour it's cheaper to train and manage people to do the job; @ > $15/hr you can justify an army of machines and a few technicians, even if your ice cream machine seems to be broken a lot of the time.
  - shagie 5y ago
    If you poke at McD's corporate jobs in IT, you'll find a bunch of jobs in machine learning, audio processing and similar for an AI drive through project. https://careers.mcdonalds.com/global-corporate/jobs?categories=Information%20Technology&page=1&limit=100 https://careers.mcdonalds.com/global-corporate/jobs?categori... Many of the tech positions have been filled (from what they were a year ago)... though still more than a few.
atoav 5y ago
Making something only you can repair lands you on my personal everlasting blacklist of shame (and I guess the everlasting blacklists of shame of others as well).

redis_mlc 5y ago

For all the romantic HN faux farmers: Dealer repair cost is only one factor, and not the largest. During harvest season, every operating hour is worth thousands of dollars to get the crop in, so onsite self-repair is critical at that time.

Glavnokoman 5y ago

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.

zwirbl 5y ago
It should, but will it? The magically all-mighty market does not fix all problems without intervention
- Glavnokoman 5y ago
  It probably won't. But that does not dismiss that it should :).
nspattak 5y ago
This is an oversimplification that overlooks at automotive engineering history (if not history in general). Are there 2T engines or Wankel engines available for people to choose?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Heavy regulation of the automotive industry is why I can't buy a new Dodge Coronet.
patrickmclaren 5y ago
Can you expand on how this would come to be, in practice?
- apples_oranges 5y ago
  Well, it's not that hard to imagine, is it? Someone founds a company that produces tractors but they are simpler, cheaper and can be repaired. If that's what customers want, they _will_ gain market share. If not, then the demand isn't there.

w3news 5y ago

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. But i think the same problem is for cars, you cannot e.g. repair your Tesla everywhere, this is also very closed.

hans1729 5y ago
>But i think the same problem is for cars, you cannot e.g. repair your Tesla everywhere, this is also very closed. The repairment-strategy for Teslas in Germany seems to be pretty simple. You just buy a new one :-)

petewailes 5y ago

Background: grew up in farming communities, live in a farming community, almost everyone around us farms. 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. Deere is the worst in this, but the rest of the industry isn't anywhere near as good as it should be. There's a reason you see old Defenders, Fourtraks, Rangers, Hiluxes and their ilk around so much on farms. They'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're basically screwed. I've no problem with the hardware getting more advanced, but that same maintainability needs to be baked in. The problem is, no-one seems interested in shaking things up there, and the manufacturers aren't in any hurry to change. They're a conservative bunch who don't need to, and for whom it's directly more profitable to make machines which can't be repaired by anyone other than themselves and people they authorise.

majjam 5y ago
Probably a naive question, but arent new Kubota tractors more repairable than say, a John Deere? Or are they just as bad?
- petewailes 5y ago
  It's a sliding scale. There's better and worse, but no-one's making open software systems which are generally available to be evaluated, updated and fixed, and the hardware side isn't much better. Sure, a Kubota, Belarus, or JCB is better than a Massey or John Deere, but none are as good as they should be.
- mikey_p 5y ago
  They aren't comparable in technology (lots of farmers want GPS, auto steer, etc) and they definitely don't compete on size and power. Kubota tops out around 200 horsepower and Deere offers tractors up into the 600+ range.
sumedh 5y ago
What about Mahindra tractors, they are pretty big in India and they sell in US as well.

dncornholio 5y ago

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? 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..

tim333 5y ago
Apple's not that bad really. Typed from an 8 year old Apple with replaced battery, ssd and keyboard.
- simion314 5y ago
  But can you have it replaced for cheap on a new model? Nobody said that you can't pay Apple a big amount of money so they fix your stuff, the issue is that in newer devices it is getting harder to repair the devices using an independent service(not everyone has the money or lives near an Apple store). Apple can just not fuck with this independent people, let them have access to the same repair documentation and parts their own people have access.
  - dncornholio 5y ago
    Apple is actively disabling people to even change their battery. Same type of battery wont work in another same type macbook anymore..
    - tim333 5y ago
      Ah. That's bad.
- syshum 5y ago
  Search Louis Rossman if you really believe that Apple is the poster child for hostility to independent repair
- swiley 5y ago

buro9 5y ago

No-one wants to sell hardware any longer, it's not as profitable as providing it on a subscription (dare we say "rent") and forcing all support, maintenance and additions to go through your channels as part of the subscription package. Unfortunately this trend is everywhere now. It happened to servers, media, has started to happen to cars... but it's happened already to agricultural hardware. 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.

willtim 5y ago
The flipside to this, is that there is perhaps no longer an incentive to sell hardware with a limited lifespan.
- liaukovv 5y ago
  Thats the point though isn't it, they dont sell it anymore. So any gains in lifespan are reaped by the company, not consumer
  - willtim 5y ago
    Hopefully more durable products means less landfill and digging up the planet looking for more raw materials. This ultimately benefits everybody.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    As long as there are competing suppliers (not colluding), they would compete to sell at lowest price.
- teachingassist 5y ago
  The opposite, surely. If there's no market for old hardware, there's no benefit to making new products which hold their value.
  - rahkiin 5y ago

the_biot 5y ago

There is a lot of misinformation about this. At face value, articles like this imply you're not able or allowed to fix mechanical issues, how dare they! What they don'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. Farmers aren't wanting their old 1950s-era tractors back. They want more control over the software -- and in particular don't want to pay for it. And while as an open source type myself I'm sympathetic to this, I'm suspicious about the outright bullshit in articles like this.

taurath 5y ago
They want to be able to make adjustments, and fix mechanical issues without the whole thing shutting down and then having to take it to the one place in town that is allowed to touch the thing. It’s one thing to say oh only the new stuff is locked down, but every part of the vehicle is, something that wasn’t the case a short while ago. In fact they’re digitizing controls and simple mechanical functionality that doesnt need to be digitized so they can abuse their maintenance monopoly.
haspok 5y ago
> in particular don't want to pay for it This is a complete misunderstanding of the problem, also, a false statement in most cases. People would like to have the option to choose who, when, where and how repairs their stuff. If the only option is the manufacturer - even after the warranty period -, then that's called a monopoly and is guaranteed to result in lower standards and higher prices and reduced availability. It is one thing to have such a problem with a laptop or a mobile, because those are relatively cheap items that are easy to replace. But if you have equipment that your livelihood depends on worth tens of thousands of dollars, then this is completely unacceptable.
- lbriner 5y ago
  It's not called a monopoly. A monopoly is a single provider of a particular service or product allowing the supplier to abuse their position. These farmers do not have to buy John Deere. If they don't like being tied in, they shouldn't have bought the equipment in the first place and chosen a rival then one of two things happen 1) John Deere realise they have been caught with their pants down and change their policy to win customers back 2) Farmers realise there is a new normal where the equipment is simply too complicated to allow them to tinker with it (or at least without losing any manufacturers guarantee).

FractalParadigm 5y ago

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

_the_inflator 5y ago
Fixing would mean hacking in this case.
_wldu 5y ago
The issue is really about freedom. If you don't care that a company can decide whether or not you may farm, then rent their equipment. If you do care, then you want 100% control of that equipment. Or as close to 100% as you can get. It's sort of comparable to writing software in C (an ISO standard with many open source compilers) to run on your commodity x86 hardware versus writing an iOS Apple Store app. In one case, you have almost complete control of the HW and SW, in the other, you have no control and can be prevented from doing so at any moment for any reason.
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  It's not that simple. There are features of these high end tractors such as automation and satellite guidance that allow you to change the scale of your operation. In a sense, you have to make a choice about what kind of business you're going to be at the same time as you're choosing your equipment.
  - 5y ago

_wldu 5y ago

Old tractors are bringing top dollar at auctions (and have been for some time now). IMO, the same thing will happen with old cars/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/needing to repair them. Late 80s and early 90s Toyotas will be sold at a premium as will any/all old Ford F-150 trucks.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
In the year 2121, the Toyota Hilux will still be the go-to choice for aspiring warlords. The difference is that they may have competition from Americans who want a repairable vehicle.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  By that yardstick, Thailand will be the richest country on earth in terms of value of cars owned because I have never seen a higher concentration of HiLux cars anywhere else in the world.
pvaldes 5y ago
They are not transferable to a new owner after 40 years here by law. If is older the tractor can't be sold, and if sold privately couldn't pass the vehicle inspection test later (that must be passed each six months, if I'm not wrong). Things can be different in your country. The main promoters of this idea are the independent diagnostic car machines makers. For the brand is a lot of risk and possible bad publicity. For the farmer the results can vary. Messing with its electronics could turn the tractor into a pile of garbage. Allowing the owner to mess with safety systems will typically lead to somebody realizing that can delay the repair for some months just inactivating the warning lights. People do the same all the time with car airbags. As farmers typically earn money after the harvest, they could be working for many months with a fake sense of safety. And as people love to brag, this could became quickly a popular option and a big mess

praptak 5y ago

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't think we can fight this with consumer decisions only, it is just too profitable to shakedown consumers like this.

gerbilly 5y ago
I agree, and the software additions are mostly useless (lasers, GPS etc...). The primary reason the software is there is for vendor lock-in and rent seeking.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

If John Deere were being honest they wouldn't sell tractors, but lease them with the cost of repair built into the yearly fee. If "parts and repairs are up to six times more profitable than selling the equipment itself" eventually they will ruin their brand and people will purchase other brands.

shagie 5y ago
That approach might work... if they were leased the same way that airplane engines are - by hours running. ( https://www.rrpf-leasing.com/home https://www.rrpf-leasing.com/home ) If you lease it with a calendar time instead, it would make it uneconomical for either JD (in the case of multiple farms sharing the same equipment and logging #x times more hours on the equipment) or for smaller operators (where JD prices it for the 'its running 7 days a week' when its only running 1 day a week). It would also be necessary to make sure that there's no way to circumvent that running time clock on the devices with 3rd party software.

wscott 5y ago

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.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
oh now that is interesting. And possibly the first real 'privacy' issue I have seen that has serious teeth.
- Boxxed 5y ago
  Apple/Google and friends have just as much power. Seeing where people are shopping is the same thing -- I bet they had evidence of the decline of malls before anyone else, for instance.

_wldu 5y ago

I wonder why JD does not make a large simple tractor that is mostly mechanical and hydraulic using standard/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.

libertine 5y ago
That would be a proof of concept that their current practices aren't justified, not only from a marketing standpoint but probably also from a legal standpoint. The problem isn't providing replacement parts. I think the issue is that locking their customers in their maintenance services is part of their business model. Most likely the lifetime of service (decades) wouldn't easily be fitted into the margin of a specific model.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
In a properly-functioning market, it seems as though this would be an opportunity for a competitor. You have to wonder why this isn't happening.
- saurik 5y ago
  If a competitor figures out how to build a tractor that is as good as the ones from John Deere then they probably can compete with John Deere directly--as in, "on their terms" with a locked down tractor that makes them more margin--rather than bother to sell unlocked tractors. The same issue happens with cell phones: users want control over their phones, but they also want good phones with good screens and good cameras. There are, in fact, phones you can buy that give you complete control, but they are the companies that have shit products and so are trying to use this as a differentiator to draw in a new market. If you are able to compete with the iPhone--like Samsung can, but almost no other manufacturer can (sometimes Google manages to pull it off with first party phones, but very few people buy those, so they are clearly missing something)--then you build a device as equally locked down as the iPhone and compete with it "on Apple's terms" as there is a nearly bottomless well of money that you can extract from users if you are willing to screw them and force them to participate in your closed ecosystem. Essentially, you can't just look at the one product in isolation and think "this should exist from a competitor", as if anyone could easily make a company to go out and do it... you instead have to consider the ecosystem of companies and the numerous barriers to entry (such as patents and limited supply lines and the enormous R&D costs) and what the incentives in the market are, and it turns out that, if your product is one where the competition is already scarce--Apple + Samsung make up 80% of the mobile phone market, with the rest likely targeting people who don't have enough money to pay for high-end phones; there is a similar thing going on with tractors, with five companies controlling >70% of the market, and AFAIK mostly now selling locked down machines--you can't just expect to magically find a competitor pop up that is going to fill this particular interest. If you manage to circumnavigate all of the hurdles to build a phone that works as well as an Apple or a Samsung device, you are almost certainly going to join the oligopoly and lock your device down also, as the incentives are just too poor otherwise. The only fix for this is regulation and, to the extent to which regulation actually already exists here, legal precedent.

po1nt 5y ago

Just don't buy Apple, John Deere or similar products. There are better alternatives and you're getting yourself into a trap where seemingly only government can help you, just because you wanted to buy more prestigious goods.

zepto 5y ago
This. When pressed, people end up admitting that the reason they buy these products is that they are better. What they are missing is that they are only better because people buy them, thus funding the improvement of the next generation. If you want open alternatives, buy them. If you want them to get better, campaign for others to buy them. Trying to force companies whose business is based on closed products to do what you want, is not going to go well.

hackbinary 5y ago

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'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) 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.

sokoloff 5y ago
Most people don’t want to pay more than they have to for things. This phenomenon often intensifies when talking about major inputs to their business.
checkyoursudo 5y ago
> They do not want to pay anymore than they have to for anything. Who wants to pay more than they have to? I usually want to pay even less than I have to.
- hackbinary 5y ago
  There is a difference between dehumanising people and making them feel worthless and negotiating in good faith, and then reneging on agreements.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
> JD is moving to a Tractor as a Service model. Part of the problem here is that in any other sort of <blank>-as-a-service model, you'd be paying MUCH less for the "service" than the <blank>. In this case, you're buying the capital equipment, and then being forced to buy a service contract in order to use it as expected, and keep it running. It'd be like buying an iPhone, needing to rent iCloud storage to make it convenient, not being able to service it (in any meaningful way), and then only being able to run apps from the App Store. Oh, wait. It's the same problem, with the same ethical and moral conundrum. In our society, a lot of us have accepted this deal for a $1,000 phone. However, it's a bit different when you're shelling out upwards of half a million for a modern tractor.

Proven 5y ago

Wut??? They've always had the right to do whatever they want with their property. They don't have the right to ask the manufacturer to honor service and warranty agreement IF they messed with the parts or performed unsupported field repairs. How many more junk articles do we have to read before this sinks in???

bbsimonbb 5y ago

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.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

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.

mnouquet 5y ago
Good luck running a electric tractor rig moving 120,000lb (modern quad-track are ~60,000lb, plus the drill, plus the fert/seed cart) all day long...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

jdikatz 5y ago

I’m a fan of right to repair, but I think it’s odd to include privacy / 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 / data security. This was the main tack that auto companies took when fighting a recent MA ballot initiative (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Massachusetts_Question_1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Massachusetts_Question_...), and there could be at least some truth to it.

markhahn 5y ago

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

skeeter2020 5y ago
we got to this point building almost entirely on incentivized standards and open protocols. It's only in the past ~20 years that we've started to replay the telephone company cycle that required the intervention and kicked off the greatest innovation anyone alive has ever seen. I'm not confident that the same governments are prepared to do this again with the current crop of "to big to fail" effective monopolies, which could mean a sea change in global competition.

nimbius 5y ago

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/operators. most farms in America are corporate monoliths. "farmers" 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. 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 a failure condition 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. 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/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.

gerbilly 5y ago
> most tractors there are nearly sixty years old. When I worked as a farmhand we were still using some 1950s Massey Ferguson tractors every day. An it's one of the biggest dairy farms in the province (Canada). I mean we had newer stuff too, but the old machines were kept chugging along. I remember opening a sideplate on a MF 135 after one of the kids jammed up the transmission. We got it unstuck with a crowbar, and were up and running again in 15 minutes.
MisterTea 5y ago

dbg31415 5y ago

Adding to the list of people who grew up on a ranch... 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. And like every bit of equipment on the place had special operation rules. "Don't run that tractor past 5k RPMs" or "Don'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'll blow out." "Remember Tractor J is Brand X, but it has an engine from Brand Z, and a PTO shaft from Brand Y..." Point being, like every piece of equipment was rigged together with duct tape. It'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. Parts from Brand Y in Engine X -- because that'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's not rated for the tractor, but it sort of fits... and it lets you get the job done today... so cool, "works" and then likely just forget about it until it breaks. 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's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs? And, in the case of accidents, even if it's the farmer who is at, the brand suffers from the news report, "A farmer father of 7 was killed today when his John Deere tractor malfunctioned..." Left out of the story is the fact that the farmer didn't repair it to spec, or the guy the farmer bought it from didn't repair it to spec... Anyway I side with John Deere here. It'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't lock down the repair process?

shagie 5y ago
> 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's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs? This gets to a very interesting question when it comes to industrial equipment (which farm equipment falls under). Unless there is *VERY CLEAR* instructions not to do it, and the manufacturer made an effort to prevent it, the manufacturer is nearly always liable. (slide 14 https://www.slideserve.com/butch/product-liability-law-in-the-farm-equipment-industry https://www.slideserve.com/butch/product-liability-law-in-th... and also note slide 54 with respect to the liability - the video presentation of this slide deck is at https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY ) Additionally. as you noted, the news that {Brand} equipment broke and killed someone travels much faster and does more impact than the later findings that {Brand} was not at fault because the owner had removed the safety equipment from it.

newdude116 5y ago

I don't find the article anymore, but I read that this is the reason why US farmers were buying Belorussian tractors http://belarus-tractor.com/en/company/news/2016/rare-soviet-era-tractor-sparks-international-interest/ http://belarus-tractor.com/en/company/news/2016/rare-soviet-...

mudpuppydogcow 5y ago

How to create a repair movement https://opencollaboration.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/how-to-create-a-repair-movement/ https://opencollaboration.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/how-to-cr...

calkuta 5y ago

The agreements between tractor makers and tractor buyers are between them are not our business. If there is significant demand for ease of repair, enterprising people will meet that demand.

VMtest 5y ago

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