16 ms·

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) acc

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.
  - debacle 5y ago
    There are aftermarket solutions for that as well. Deere is for people who want a deluxe brand that is all encompassing vs users who don't mind fiddling with their hardware.
    - DubiousPusher 5y ago
      Yeah but if you're running a fleet, then you have to scale your outfitting and maintenance to handle that. It's not practical for a lot of people. A lot of businesses lose their ass by trying to focus on too many things at the same time. I'm not saying this is the right way for ag. to go forward. But all our incentives right now are to either specialize a small farm around high margin product or scale as wide as possible on low margin product. That is going to set a lot of people on the course of basically renting their equipment and deferring the maintenance to the provider. We probably should create some incentives for farmers to be more self reliant. That would probably be good for our sustainability but I don't think we should ignore that currently the choice isn't black and white.
swiley 5y ago
Lots of people don't care about their right to vote but we should all freak out when it gets taken away from them.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  People don't get to just buy a different brand of government though, unlike tractors.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Commodities tend to have very low profit margin. It wouldn't be surprising if organizations like John deer sell their tractors at a steep loss temporarily which could prevent farmers from being able to buy other brands.
    - missedthecue 5y ago
      John Deere MSRP is well above most competition.
      - randomdata 5y ago
        A friend of mine, one of the larger farmers in the area, purchased a new CaseIH tractor a couple years back. Even before it arrived in his yard, the Deere salesman caught wind of the purchase and arrived with "We can't be having that." Made my friend an offer he couldn't refuse and the CaseIH tractor was sold before even a single hour was put on it. A high MSRP means a lot of room to play with the numbers.
- freeopinion 5y ago
  Maybe... Compare these different proposals: 1. Disenfranchise everyone who hasn't voted in the last 10 years. 2. Require a two-year waiting period from the time you register as a voter before you can vote. Require registrations to be renewed every 6 years. Voting automatically renews an unexpired registration. It seems to me that both proposals should attract a lot of attention. But one is more alarming than the other. And you could water it down to be even less alarming and make some good arguments for your proposal. This is how you boil a frog. Here's one nobody seems to care about: 3. Require people to join a private club to be able to vote in primary elections. Only allow candidates who were nominated by those private clubs. Allow the private clubs to be controlled by a handful of people. You know, now I think about it, right-to-repair has a great deal in common with right-to-vote.
dalbasal 5y ago
So... I think your right. Underlying a lot of trends eroding user/owner rights are practical benefits. This as true for ipods as it is for for tractors. My grandfather had an old Massey, and several others for parts. It's easy to idealize this from afar (I do), but young farmers often don't want it. That said, the individual preference and the systemic trend are two different things. The right to repair, is also the right to have a 3rd party repair. Competition, choice. At some point along the trend, it's about more than that. There comes a point where "who actually owns this farm" starts to be a question. JD might exercise the same power over farmers that Apple exercises over app developers. A my way or the highway world.
randomdata 5y ago
You must know my neighbour. He was running a Kubota for a year or two, but it didn't take him long to replace it with a Deere. I have most of the major brands in my shed. I don't particularly care much about what colour I'm using. Purchases have been made based on cost, which has included some green equipment when a great auction find has been found. My experience says that JD has the UX nailed. When you're spending 12 hour days in the seat, the little things do start to make a big difference. I am not sure it is fair to be dismissive of it as being a result of great branding. The equipment is meant to be used and the experience and comfort while using it can most definitely be worth a premium to many.
- Casperin 5y ago
  This made me think of how many developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) choose Apples products. A linux machine might be better on performance, maintainance, and all that, but Linux does not care about UX the way Apple does.
  - maest 5y ago
    What about all the developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) that choose unix machines?
    - iratewizard 5y ago
      You're not going to convince someone in the cult of Apple that their overpriced machine isn't worth the premium.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      Are any of the unixes[1], other than macOS, commonly used as the system powering the screen? [1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/ https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
    - flerchin 5y ago
      The ux for the things I _actually do_ is way better on a linux machine.
Tabular-Iceberg 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. They should still want right to repair for the same reason that most of the internet wants to run on GPL software. Almost all the companies pay some vendor for it, but unlike the farmers they can just take their business elsewhere if a vendor turns bad.
hippari 5y ago
>At the end of the day farming is just a business same as any other Being a business is the reason you want right to repairs. If a single vendor can bankrupt your business then it's not a sustainable business. Right to repair give you cheaper options for repairing your tools.
- rm_-rf_slash 5y ago
  A lot of businesses live entirely within major tech company walled gardens, from the iOS App Store to the Azure Marketplace, where vendors have zero control over the platform. A precarious position to be in, perhaps, but hardly unsustainable.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  Not just cheaper, any option. If the tech is busy because everyone is harvesting at the same time; your screwed.
kickout 5y ago
This is correct and will probably only be broken from a crazy differentiating hardware offering (like a self-driving tractor). It's coming...
mikey_p 5y ago
Not sure what scale you're talking about, but Kubota doesn't really compete with Deere on larger tractors. I don't see any tracked options from Kubota and their tractors don't really go much over 200 horsepower. Deere and Kubota only really compete at the smaller/utility side of things. Also the reason people get locked into Deere isn't just the tractors, but the vertical integration. Can you run your John Deere NT or DB series planter with Greenstar 2 on a Kubota? Possibly, but you've got to buy the hardware from Deere and you'd have to add auto steer, etc. (FWIW Kubota doesn't even sell planters)
- mitchell_h 5y ago
  I live in an extremely rural area. The Deere integrations are a huge reason. Another that's not talked about is Deere field service. It's just DAMN GOOD. If you're running a serious tractor(7-9 series ) and it's the middle of planting/harvest hours can be the difference between red and black margins. Deere will roll out a team with 30ft trailer of parts out in hours if you have an issue. CaseIH will sorta match this, kubota and New Holand will simply not.
  - taylodl 5y ago
    Exactly, and at the moment in time you don't care about "right to repair" - you need to get back up and running now. Which has led me to believe "right to repair" is a ruse, but for what?
    - Cerium 5y ago
      Right to repair tractors has become talking point because it is a use case that cannot be easily dismissed as "unimportant to real Americans" since many Americans value individualism, hard work, and their countries reputation for food production - all of which are idealized in the concept of the independent American farmer.
    - supercheetah 5y ago
      A ruse to give people flexibility in how they want to repair their own equipment? What a terrible thing.
sybercecurity 5y ago
(not to pile on) Right to repair also covers independent/third party service. People may not want to repair the hardware themselves, but they may want to take it to a cheaper/closer third party to repair it. The local JD service may be in the next county, but there may be a local mechanic that could repair the tractor, but cannot due to restrictions, licensing, etc. Of course you may not want the local guy to try because they may not be competent enough, but people think that should be the owner's decision, not the manufacturer's.
- tartoran 5y ago
  This is a big problem, you can have a used JD part but it won’t work because JD needs to squeeze every once of profit from their customers. This service based trend is the worst type of rent seeking I’ve seen in years
etempleton 5y ago
I also grew up in a rural high school with a large farming population. I categorize farmers into three types: 1. Professional - Usually highly educated, good business sense. Probably obtained an advanced degree in agriculture science, though not always, some self-educate very successfully. These farmers generally do not like John Deere and think they are overpriced, not as good as they once were, and find the lack of right to repair infuriating. 2. Uneducated - Likely barely passed high school due to a complete lack of effort, because they were going to be farmers and school, "couldn't teach them nothin." Farming is an identity for these individuals. Buying a John Deere is part of that lifestyle. Some kids grow up with a Ferrari on their wall, these kids had a John Deere tractor. The problem with these individuals as it relates to business is that they do not understand business or accounting and probably only have a rudimentary understanding of ag science. They overspend on equipment and their only basic ag science understanding leaves them unable to adapt as well as the pros to droughts, infestations, and other adverse conditions. 3. Gentleman Farmers - Usually educated, but perhaps in an unrelated field. Farming is a hobby. Perhaps a retirement "job." If they make money, great, if not, well, they have money to spare. They buy John Deere, because they can afford it and because it seems like the obvious choice. They are happy to pay their local dealer to fix or repair their tractor, it is something they don't have to worry about and costs are not a real going concern. Breaking even is a success. Both the less educated farmers and the gentleman farmers treat John Deere tractors as a status symbol (every other farmer know exactly how much a John Deere tractor costs). And when you know how much they cost it is like seeing someone drive by in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, because, well, they cost as much as a Ferrari or Lamborghini, if not more. The professional farmers could care less because they are running a business.
- throwaway292893 5y ago
  Wow. What an incredibly offensive comment. I love how HN understands the right to repair when it comes to their gadgets, but when it comes to tractors it's probably because the farmers are uneducated hicks. Please tell me more how they don't understand AG science enough, but you have such a strong grasp on it. JD tractors were and are reliable and top tier in quality, that's why they are popular and that's why people stick to the brand. I've built Kioti tractors when I was teenager. They'd do the job if you had to use it, but it's no JD in terms of quality. Farmers just want the quality they've always had with JD but the ability to fix simple stuff like they used to without it costing them an arm and a leg. The stereotypes you listed off don't sound like anyone I've ever experienced. They sound like caricatures you painted in your head with your lack of understanding.
dehrmann 5y ago
> At the end of the day farming is just a business same as any other Is your core competency farming or tractor repair? That said, I am sympathetic to farmers who want to repair their equipment. There's a scale where you have enough free time that with simple enough equipment, it does make sense to repair it yourself.

_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.
- debacle 5y ago
  There are aftermarket solutions for that as well. Deere is for people who want a deluxe brand that is all encompassing vs users who don't mind fiddling with their hardware.
  - DubiousPusher 5y ago
    Yeah but if you're running a fleet, then you have to scale your outfitting and maintenance to handle that. It's not practical for a lot of people. A lot of businesses lose their ass by trying to focus on too many things at the same time. I'm not saying this is the right way for ag. to go forward. But all our incentives right now are to either specialize a small farm around high margin product or scale as wide as possible on low margin product. That is going to set a lot of people on the course of basically renting their equipment and deferring the maintenance to the provider. We probably should create some incentives for farmers to be more self reliant. That would probably be good for our sustainability but I don't think we should ignore that currently the choice isn't black and white.

swiley 5y ago

Lots of people don't care about their right to vote but we should all freak out when it gets taken away from them.

HPsquared 5y ago
People don't get to just buy a different brand of government though, unlike tractors.
- swiley 5y ago
  Commodities tend to have very low profit margin. It wouldn't be surprising if organizations like John deer sell their tractors at a steep loss temporarily which could prevent farmers from being able to buy other brands.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    John Deere MSRP is well above most competition.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      A friend of mine, one of the larger farmers in the area, purchased a new CaseIH tractor a couple years back. Even before it arrived in his yard, the Deere salesman caught wind of the purchase and arrived with "We can't be having that." Made my friend an offer he couldn't refuse and the CaseIH tractor was sold before even a single hour was put on it. A high MSRP means a lot of room to play with the numbers.
freeopinion 5y ago
Maybe... Compare these different proposals: 1. Disenfranchise everyone who hasn't voted in the last 10 years. 2. Require a two-year waiting period from the time you register as a voter before you can vote. Require registrations to be renewed every 6 years. Voting automatically renews an unexpired registration. It seems to me that both proposals should attract a lot of attention. But one is more alarming than the other. And you could water it down to be even less alarming and make some good arguments for your proposal. This is how you boil a frog. Here's one nobody seems to care about: 3. Require people to join a private club to be able to vote in primary elections. Only allow candidates who were nominated by those private clubs. Allow the private clubs to be controlled by a handful of people. You know, now I think about it, right-to-repair has a great deal in common with right-to-vote.

dalbasal 5y ago

So... I think your right. Underlying a lot of trends eroding user/owner rights are practical benefits. This as true for ipods as it is for for tractors. My grandfather had an old Massey, and several others for parts. It's easy to idealize this from afar (I do), but young farmers often don't want it. That said, the individual preference and the systemic trend are two different things. The right to repair, is also the right to have a 3rd party repair. Competition, choice. At some point along the trend, it's about more than that. There comes a point where "who actually owns this farm" starts to be a question. JD might exercise the same power over farmers that Apple exercises over app developers. A my way or the highway world.

randomdata 5y ago

You must know my neighbour. He was running a Kubota for a year or two, but it didn't take him long to replace it with a Deere. I have most of the major brands in my shed. I don't particularly care much about what colour I'm using. Purchases have been made based on cost, which has included some green equipment when a great auction find has been found. My experience says that JD has the UX nailed. When you're spending 12 hour days in the seat, the little things do start to make a big difference. I am not sure it is fair to be dismissive of it as being a result of great branding. The equipment is meant to be used and the experience and comfort while using it can most definitely be worth a premium to many.

Casperin 5y ago
This made me think of how many developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) choose Apples products. A linux machine might be better on performance, maintainance, and all that, but Linux does not care about UX the way Apple does.
- maest 5y ago
  What about all the developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) that choose unix machines?
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    You're not going to convince someone in the cult of Apple that their overpriced machine isn't worth the premium.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    Are any of the unixes[1], other than macOS, commonly used as the system powering the screen? [1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/ https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
  - flerchin 5y ago
    The ux for the things I _actually do_ is way better on a linux machine.

Tabular-Iceberg 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. They should still want right to repair for the same reason that most of the internet wants to run on GPL software. Almost all the companies pay some vendor for it, but unlike the farmers they can just take their business elsewhere if a vendor turns bad.

hippari 5y ago

>At the end of the day farming is just a business same as any other Being a business is the reason you want right to repairs. If a single vendor can bankrupt your business then it's not a sustainable business. Right to repair give you cheaper options for repairing your tools.

rm_-rf_slash 5y ago
A lot of businesses live entirely within major tech company walled gardens, from the iOS App Store to the Azure Marketplace, where vendors have zero control over the platform. A precarious position to be in, perhaps, but hardly unsustainable.
pnutjam 5y ago
Not just cheaper, any option. If the tech is busy because everyone is harvesting at the same time; your screwed.

kickout 5y ago

This is correct and will probably only be broken from a crazy differentiating hardware offering (like a self-driving tractor). It's coming...

mikey_p 5y ago

Not sure what scale you're talking about, but Kubota doesn't really compete with Deere on larger tractors. I don't see any tracked options from Kubota and their tractors don't really go much over 200 horsepower. Deere and Kubota only really compete at the smaller/utility side of things. Also the reason people get locked into Deere isn't just the tractors, but the vertical integration. Can you run your John Deere NT or DB series planter with Greenstar 2 on a Kubota? Possibly, but you've got to buy the hardware from Deere and you'd have to add auto steer, etc. (FWIW Kubota doesn't even sell planters)

mitchell_h 5y ago
I live in an extremely rural area. The Deere integrations are a huge reason. Another that's not talked about is Deere field service. It's just DAMN GOOD. If you're running a serious tractor(7-9 series ) and it's the middle of planting/harvest hours can be the difference between red and black margins. Deere will roll out a team with 30ft trailer of parts out in hours if you have an issue. CaseIH will sorta match this, kubota and New Holand will simply not.
- taylodl 5y ago
  Exactly, and at the moment in time you don't care about "right to repair" - you need to get back up and running now. Which has led me to believe "right to repair" is a ruse, but for what?
  - Cerium 5y ago
    Right to repair tractors has become talking point because it is a use case that cannot be easily dismissed as "unimportant to real Americans" since many Americans value individualism, hard work, and their countries reputation for food production - all of which are idealized in the concept of the independent American farmer.
  - supercheetah 5y ago
    A ruse to give people flexibility in how they want to repair their own equipment? What a terrible thing.

sybercecurity 5y ago

(not to pile on) Right to repair also covers independent/third party service. People may not want to repair the hardware themselves, but they may want to take it to a cheaper/closer third party to repair it. The local JD service may be in the next county, but there may be a local mechanic that could repair the tractor, but cannot due to restrictions, licensing, etc. Of course you may not want the local guy to try because they may not be competent enough, but people think that should be the owner's decision, not the manufacturer's.

tartoran 5y ago
This is a big problem, you can have a used JD part but it won’t work because JD needs to squeeze every once of profit from their customers. This service based trend is the worst type of rent seeking I’ve seen in years

etempleton 5y ago

I also grew up in a rural high school with a large farming population. I categorize farmers into three types: 1. Professional - Usually highly educated, good business sense. Probably obtained an advanced degree in agriculture science, though not always, some self-educate very successfully. These farmers generally do not like John Deere and think they are overpriced, not as good as they once were, and find the lack of right to repair infuriating. 2. Uneducated - Likely barely passed high school due to a complete lack of effort, because they were going to be farmers and school, "couldn't teach them nothin." Farming is an identity for these individuals. Buying a John Deere is part of that lifestyle. Some kids grow up with a Ferrari on their wall, these kids had a John Deere tractor. The problem with these individuals as it relates to business is that they do not understand business or accounting and probably only have a rudimentary understanding of ag science. They overspend on equipment and their only basic ag science understanding leaves them unable to adapt as well as the pros to droughts, infestations, and other adverse conditions. 3. Gentleman Farmers - Usually educated, but perhaps in an unrelated field. Farming is a hobby. Perhaps a retirement "job." If they make money, great, if not, well, they have money to spare. They buy John Deere, because they can afford it and because it seems like the obvious choice. They are happy to pay their local dealer to fix or repair their tractor, it is something they don't have to worry about and costs are not a real going concern. Breaking even is a success. Both the less educated farmers and the gentleman farmers treat John Deere tractors as a status symbol (every other farmer know exactly how much a John Deere tractor costs). And when you know how much they cost it is like seeing someone drive by in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, because, well, they cost as much as a Ferrari or Lamborghini, if not more. The professional farmers could care less because they are running a business.

throwaway292893 5y ago
Wow. What an incredibly offensive comment. I love how HN understands the right to repair when it comes to their gadgets, but when it comes to tractors it's probably because the farmers are uneducated hicks. Please tell me more how they don't understand AG science enough, but you have such a strong grasp on it. JD tractors were and are reliable and top tier in quality, that's why they are popular and that's why people stick to the brand. I've built Kioti tractors when I was teenager. They'd do the job if you had to use it, but it's no JD in terms of quality. Farmers just want the quality they've always had with JD but the ability to fix simple stuff like they used to without it costing them an arm and a leg. The stereotypes you listed off don't sound like anyone I've ever experienced. They sound like caricatures you painted in your head with your lack of understanding.

dehrmann 5y ago

> At the end of the day farming is just a business same as any other Is your core competency farming or tractor repair? That said, I am sympathetic to farmers who want to repair their equipment. There's a scale where you have enough free time that with simple enough equipment, it does make sense to repair it yourself.