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Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

farms.com

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Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#161

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #118
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a century of case law from the motor vehicle world that make this a non-issue.

The reason that happens with road vehicles is because you actually have diagnostics standard ISO 22901, which enforces at least partially interoperability. Actual config/ROM changes are still heavily protected by manufacturers and are limited to authorized dealers.

People have all kinds of tuners that they throw in their cars. And you never hear about a manufacturer being sued into oblivion because someone threw a garbage tuner with garbage settings into their car.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#162

Post by freeopinion »

buro9 wrote: post #37

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…

Done right, this could actually be better.

I own a lawn mower. In fact I usually own two lawn mowers--the new one and the one I just need to repair a bit.

All of my neighbors own lawn mowers. We all use our lawn mowers about an hour per week. It's extremely wasteful to purchase 5 lawn mowers to perform 5 hours of mowing per week.

We could all hire Suwanda down the street to mow our lawns, but that would cost a lot more than buying a mower. That's mostly because of the labor costs. So what if Suwanda just rented the mower to us and charged us enough to keep the blade sharp and the engine tuned? And what if we didn't pick it up and return it to Suwanda? What if we just passed it around between us, and Suwanda was the 6th stop in the rotation?

And every once in a while, the person who got it after Suwanda noticed it was a completely different mower. So 5-6 neighbors pay $5/month and always have a mower in tip-top shape, but never actually maintain it and never shop for a new one.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#163

Post by mikey_p »

FractalParadigm wrote: post #49

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 the…

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)

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#164

Post by cferr »

tehaugmenter wrote: post #94
buro9 wrote: post #37

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…

I mean you vote with your dollar. Stop supporting these bad practices. I don't, it's a hull to get everyone to stop and force themselves to work around. Maybe it's a losing battle, but stop giving them money and we'll be better off. I would not purchase a product with an underlying subscription. I even go as far as getting older cars so I don't have to worry about it.

> I would not purchase a product with an underlying subscription.

Not even your phone?

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#165

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

hippari wrote: post #142
FractalParadigm wrote: post #49

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 the…

>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.

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.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#166

Post by mikey_p »

buro9 wrote: post #37

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…

That's really because customers are demanding software now. They want auto steer, variable rate application, they want to mark their tile inlets or waterways on their fields before they upload into the tractor. They want their sprayer or planter to integrate and show them singulation and population or rates right there in the cab. Lots of famers are using iPads along with multiple in cab systems to manage all the technology and record additional data. I've see farmers planting with as many as 4 or 5 screens in their tractors and it's getting to where there's an aftermarket just for mounts to hold more screens and computers. Farmers aren't just accepting that, but they are buying additional systems that require more software all the time because at the end of the day, it's business.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#167

Post by GuB-42 »

msrenee wrote: post #139
GuB-42 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 manufacture…

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 pr…

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.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#168

Post by jdikatz »

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_...), and there could be at least some truth to it.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#169

Post by mikey_p »

the_biot wrote: post #39

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 fun…

I bet the number one feature most of these farmers want is the ability to defeat emissions controls so they don't have to use DEF (diesel exhaust fluid).

Don't believe me? Go watch some farmers on Youtube and it won't take long to pick up the hatred for government interference. I don't know if it's selection or survivorship bias or what, but farmers really do not like being told what to do by someone else.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#170

Post by mikey_p »

majjam wrote: post #26
petewailes wrote: post #22

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, F…

Probably a naive question, but arent new Kubota tractors more repairable than say, a John Deere? Or are they just as bad?

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.
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