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For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

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Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#41

Post by paulmd »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #21

My understanding is that farming equipment is quite specialized, but I fail to see how no entrepreneur has capitalized on making "old school" tractors today. The immediate retort is that John Deere's approach is maximally profitable-- but is it? Sketchy websites host hacked firmware giving farmers the freedom to work on their own tractors anyways. The equipment manufacturers have lost their goodwill with farmers. Fro…

nobody wants an "old school" tractor that needs someone in the cab driving it. Modern highly-integrated farm equipment is a massive boost for productivity and a massive reduction in costs.

There's a different discussion to be had as to why there hasn't arisen a company that shears the sheep a bit more gently, but generally on the whole the market doesn't want the old-school tractors. This article is not the overall shape of the market. Farmers generally want to farm, not be software/hardware engineers developing their own tractor guidance systems.

As for that topic, generally markets are not as efficient, modern businesses operate at such high scales that it's extremely difficult for competitors to enter the market. It took Elon Musk to do it for the auto industry, that's the scale of funding and production that you need to compete. It's an oligopoly, not an efficient market.

techpeople like ourselves are the last ones that should be pointing fingers, we are the ones who created the whole "as a service" model, and created the basis for closed firmware that users have no right to access. It's our business models applied to a different market, and it's just as noxious when we do it.

It’s not like I can go take a look at the firmware of the processor I’m typing this on, now is it? Why doesn’t someone just start up a new CPU company that lets me see everything?

(and yeah some people like RAPTOR are trying but that’s the shape of the problem, it’s a niche desire and there’s enormous startup costs, and established players can easily drop prices for a few years and crush you, so realistically it’s not a market that can be efficient.)

Markets aren't going to do this stuff on their own. If you don't regulate them via something like right to repair, they'll skin you as roughly as they please and crush any upstart who tries to do things "the right way". Welcome to the Free Market - a truly free market is rarely "fair" to competitors or pleasant to customers.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#42

Post by xnyan »

sneak wrote: post #20
brenden2 wrote: post #16

The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help custome…

If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

http://www.belarus-tractor.com/en/

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#43

Post by [deleted] »

brenden2 wrote: post #16

The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help custome…

[deleted]

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#44

Post by catalogia »

sneak wrote: post #20
brenden2 wrote: post #16

The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help custome…

If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

How many times must it be demonstrated that "market forces" is not a silver bullet to every problem before people take the hint?

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#45

Post by svachalek »

vearwhershuh wrote: post #30

"These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it.” Amen. It is true that there is always someone saying "Things were better back then." But that doesn't always mean that they are wrong.

Yup. I also put large household appliances in this category. They've been getting more expensive and more fragile for decades, without much real progress other than energy efficiency which is unrelated to the fragility afaik.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#46

Post by wvenable »

sneak wrote: post #20
brenden2 wrote: post #16

The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help custome…

If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

Why was this downvoted? I just made the same comment before noticing this one already done. Competition is what solves these kind of things.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#47

Post by xnyan »

pleasantpeasant wrote: post #29

Right to repair laws need to be put in place. American corporations are trying to reach a point where you don't own products. You are merely long-term renting or leasing products from them. And any alterations or repairs will come with a heavy price. It's already hard enough to repair your own vehicle without taking it to a dealership. How long until small car shops can't even fix any cars if they don't have the tool…

It's already here. The only reason I can do my own work on my N20 engine BMW is because they implemented really bad and vulnerable car DRM that can be trivially defeated, but they have improved on that in latter models.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#48

Post by josephorjoe »

lostgame wrote: post #18

This is one of the single best examples of the ludicrous nature of the recent pattern of loss of right-to-repair with regards to software and hardware control. John Deere is literally bottom-barrel scum of, well, I guess, now - the tech industry - and it's their own fault that farmers are turning to purchasing older models. '“There’s an affinity factor if you grew up around these tractors, but it goes way beyond that…

I'm not a farmer and I am a software engineer, but I'm with the famers here. I want as little software in my products as possible.

I've been shopping for some audio equipment, and noticed that the latest version of an audio interface I'm interested in has replaced hardware switches on the device with software controls run from an attached computer.

I was immediately turned off by the new version and will likely buy a used one or one from a different manufacturer.

The hardware switches are old reliable technology and do not add much weight or size to the unit. And while the device is meant to be connected to a computer, it just needs to do so as a signal passing device, not as a device that is dependent upon software on the computer.

I'm sure the marketing department could explain why the new software controlled version is super awesome, but all it looks like to me is extra setup headaches and creating a dependency on software that I have no guarantee of being able to install on a future computer/OS combo.

Plus, there is always a chance the manufacturer will do something stupid/evil and brick old versions some day.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#49

Post by asdff »

ziftface wrote: post #13
privateSFacct wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All good ideas, but repairing surface mount / integrated / dust and vibration glued parts is not as easy EVEN IF they were open standards as a 40 year old tractor is to repair. I spent way to long repairing an old gas engine, it was super simple in terms of operating approach. Opening the hood on my new car - the fixes are not as obvious.

I can't help but think that this is intentional. I'm pretty sure it's possible to create a more modular design without sacrificing anything. Especially given John Deere's record, it doesn't seem far fetched that they would actively seek out ways to make it more difficult to repair their tractors.

It's definitely intentional. You pop the hood of a new car and you see a plastic cover, not the engine. The plastic cover doesn't do anything for the car, it adds cost to the car, and mechanics have to remove and reinstall it if they do any work at all.

However, it does have a function: to obscure you from the workings of your car, and push you to take the car to a dealership or someone buying genuine parts at least.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#50

Post by froindt »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #21

My understanding is that farming equipment is quite specialized, but I fail to see how no entrepreneur has capitalized on making "old school" tractors today. The immediate retort is that John Deere's approach is maximally profitable-- but is it? Sketchy websites host hacked firmware giving farmers the freedom to work on their own tractors anyways. The equipment manufacturers have lost their goodwill with farmers. Fro…

You can go with non-John-Deere equipment and get a relatively cheap and simple tractor. I'm not sure about the minimum you can get in terms of electronics.

A big challengefarm equipment manufacturing companies are facing are related to emissions controls. A 40 year old tractor doesn't give a rip about CO2 emissions, but new equipment has to meet the strict standards. This means you've probably added a computer to fine tune performance, or perhaps you're simply operating moderately less efficiently than optimal.

A number of years ago, some dust control laws were passed. If farmers were to follow the letter of the law, their harvester would have needed to spray water to prevent dust from the gravel road, and needed to do similar out in the field (harvesting corn is very dusty). It would be hopelessly uneconomical, and would have absolutely killed efficiency in harvesting. It was talked about on the farm radio programs pretty extensively in the context of "the politicians don't get what it takes to farm. These sorts of controls sound great for factories, but they're not adding nuance to the bill for farmers, and it's unrealistic they we could follow the law if we wanted to."

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