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Farmer Lobbying Group Sells Out Farmers, Helps Enshrine John Deere's Tractor Repair Monopoly (vice.com)
Jason Koebler writes: The California Farm Bureau, a group that lobbies on behalf of farmers, reached a "right to repair" agreement with the Equipment Dealers Association (which represents John Deere and other manufacturers) last week. But the specifics of the agreement were written by the manufacturers, and falls far short of providing the types of change that would be needed to make repairing tractors easier. In fact, the agreement makes the same concessions that the Equipment Dealers Association announced in February it would voluntarily give to all farmers. The agreement will not allow farmers to buy repair parts, break firmware DRM, or otherwise alter software for the purposes of repair.
What happened to my Slashdot?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If farmers do not actually own the vehicle they pay for, but instead only receive a âoelicense to operate the vehicleâ as John Deere claims, shouldn't repairs all be at the cost of John Deer, and any losses due to mechanical or software failure mean John Deere is liable for damages...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Should have let the California Raisins negotiate instead. Or California Cows. Or....
If not being able to fix them makes them worse than other tractors, stop buying them. If it's still a better tractor even after all of this, then maybe you keep buying them. It does suck, but if you keep putting money in their pockets, they'll just keep doing what they're doing.
Any group that "lobbies on behalf of $group" will whore their services to the highest bidder.
It just happens that the Equipment Dealers Association offered them a sweeter deal than the farmers that they ostensibly represent.
Not that they will return the farmers' money or anything like that.
Should have let the California Raisins negotiate instead.
The best part of having the California Raisins represent you, is that if they fail and you are in danger of starving you can feast on the tasty flesh of your negotiation team.
The best negotiators are always the ones with skin in the game, however wrinkly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, I get that farmers should be able to repair their own equipment (if they actually own it, not leased) using 3rd party parts and mechanics. But Deere absolutely SHOULD NOT be forced to sell parts to someone if they don't want to. They are a private company, and as such, they get to choose the customers they serve and sell their shit to--period.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm not sure if Mahindra does the same thing or not; but I've noticed a few ads for them up here now and then, on radio stations where ag people might be listening.
The Deere hats are seen by some as being as American as the flag almost; but real patriots don't sit still for shit like this. I'd be all over this if I were in marketing for those other companies. Suggested slogan: "Shoot your Deere this season".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Farm Bureau represents interests of those individuals and groups that are involved in agriculture. Some of them are farmers many others are businesses or trade associations involved in agriculture. The Farm Bureau protects the interests of bankers and farm credit providers and equipment manufacturers to name just a few. It is no surprise to me that they would take this position on equipment repair. Farm Bureau is right wing but there are more centrist or even left organizations such as the Farmers Union.
They realized their real big businesses lease
Seems a fitting punishment for buying John Deere tractors. Perhaps buy tractors from a company that isn't the scum of the earth?
If there aren't any such companies, all of the farmers could pool their resources to start one.
well maybe some should counter sue saying if John deer is just renting the hardware to me then they need to pick up the repair tab on there own dime.
Just like automobiles the days of doing your own servicing of tractors has become obsolete as manufactures want a piece of that pie. No doubt will be selling service agreements to the farmers .
Anyone disliking John Deere's or Digital Convergence's prices or policies should simply take his business elsewhere.
If laws were fair and just then that would be true.
But we have an organization that is abusing ill-conceived laws to apply force against us. The government is acting as an agent of John Deere. The main belief of Libertarians is that the government isn't to use force against its citizens, not to extract taxes, and not to saddle them with needless regulation. Individual freedom is sacrosanct, but because often such regulation is heavily biased towards one party we cannot allow them to exist.
I don't think you know what the terms 'free market', 'capitalistic market', and even 'walled garden' really mean, but that is not the point of this story.
Have we not learned yet?
No, more like John Deere is the Oracle of their industry.
Big farmers probably like everything being on a subscription model. Big businesses like leasing equipment more than owning and fixing it themselves. California's produce is mostly grown by large old farms run by businesses and families who were there when the government subsidized water diversion bonanza was going on. These big farms are who funds the lobbying group, so it's who that group represents.
It's called a free market. Don't like it, buy someone else's tractors you fucking libtards.
There's a lot of factors that work against them here.
At this point, it's an effective monopoly. They'll call it "market leader," but their "lead market position," makes it hard to produce cheaper tractors, or to compete in the same market for new equipment, either at scale or dollar for dollar.
For large farms, it works in their favor, so the biggest of the big appreciate having single vendor suppliers with dedicated staff and a rotation of equipment. So the big bucks still favor them anyway, and that's not likely to change.
However, this hits small farms especially hard. The equipment is good, but it's far more complex than your average commuter vehicle. Blow a sensor and your land lies fallow for a few days because the system will refuse to start the motor. You need an authorized repairman to come out, suss it out, source a replacement, and fix it. Half the time it's just them putting their authorization code in to restart while you're chasing daylight. Imagine every time your computer crashes, you'd need to get a microsoft tech out - even if you're running linux - to authorize you to reboot your machine? That's a 300-450 cost, a few hundred for the appointment plus $150/hr.
Not only that, these farms are on a fairly high risk/reward system. They have to pay out now, and the weather and markets dictate later what their effort was worth. They're risk adverse. It's hard to go with a new tractor, system, etc. Sure, the ability to fix it yourself is great, but not if you're required to exercise that right 5x more than you would with the known brand.
So there are folks out there trying to make replacements, but it's like trying to sell linux to the stereotypical mom. Sure, it can do as much, and yeah, technically it might be able to do more than that old chestnut, buuuuuuttt.... well, find a folk who refers to "the facebooks" and starts browser searches with "please," and see how far you get with them installing, configuring and using linux on their own. Oh, and it costs more than windows too.
That's the problem with a monopoly, it doesn't compete fairly in a capitalist market. They've locked down the product, the repair and replacement parts AND the repairmen, and ensured there's no realistic competition in any of those markets, and unlike apple, who's faced a lot of flack for attempting to deliberately lock out third party parts or repairs, they've successfully lobbied state and federal governments to double down on their farm equipment cartel. They're actually trying to make it not only difficult to do manually, and impossible to get the parts elsewhere, but they're trying to make it literally illegal. The claim is that you COULD modify software or settings which impact emissions and other features, which are protected by law, and therefore consumers can't be allowed to do so.
The fact that they could get a farmers right lobby group to effectively cave shows the power of their monopoly, and that's just another sign that it's not a free market.
NFM
Has there been a time in recent history that farmers weren't getting screwed over in CA... or that a CA based lobbyist group didn't sell out their constituency? Welcome to the snowflake state.
Heck of a lot more then I thought there would be. In other words, there is a choice if you don't like the repair agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tractor_manufacturers_of_the_United_States
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
that's not how a ruling class works, silly. Now don't forget to vote for establishment candidates with populist rhetoric in the mid-terms. And pay special attention to meaningless wedge issues while you're at it. Can't have your pretty little head getting all woozy with thoughts about the economy and the impact of mega corporations can we?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you want to make a controller for a game console expect to buy a license. The XBone's controller has DRM in it that's protected by the DMCA. It also has code covered by patents (a common trick of Nintendo's that they used to force you to buy carts from them).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The fact that they could get a farmers right lobby group to effectively cave shows the power of their monopoly, and that's just another sign that it's not a free market.
Interesting someone chose Apple as the title, when there's an Android one can purchase. The same with farm equipment. Foreign makers* can start selling to US farmers. Hell, Canadian and Mexican equipment can be imported, free of this nonsense. And lest we forget the used equipment market suddenly hasn't disappeared, unlike the E-book/gaming market.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers
Did you click through? You realize they list manufacturers that went bankrupt a 100 years ago, right?
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Similar bastards infiltrated the CA Granges several years ago too, a complete Agribiz takeover, corrupt as Hell.
The surviving groups now call themselves Guilds and they are keeping the old, non invasive, organic ways alive for future generations.
What free market? It is a special, weird law (DMCA) that is preventing them from repairing the tractors. A free market wouldn't ever have anything like DMCA.
but their "lead market position," makes it hard to produce cheaper tractors.
Oh, you're just racist against smart farm equipment and Gigantic Corporations. You Luddite, you ... you ... I can't even say the words in polite company. (Heh, company -- get it?) Go find and pick on someone slightly or greatly smaller than you, like WE do. It's easier that way.
Corporations (AKA People v2) have feelings, too! "Hey, that's MY rube you're fleecing! Go away and find your own!"
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
now that sounds as something that would benefit our farming community.
Just swap out your JohnDeere circuit board with this crowdfunded custom board and enjoy all the extras.
You do realize, this doesn't appear to have anything to do with what farmers agreed to when they buy a tractor, new or used. This is a manufacture burying DRM into their product, and it doesn't matter if the customer knows, the manufacture can choose to enforce the DRM at any time. This is likely coming to you, Tesla for example has do not fix/update VIN code lists of cars they will not sell parts to or update software on, because they appear to them to have unauthorized repairs.
Without the right for owners to overcome these restrictions, it will continue to spread outside of tractors. Deere/Tesla/etc goes bankrupt, the patent troll buys the rights, and all of a sudden they get to decide if your machine is worth anything, and how much you have to pay them to keep it.
Let's be honest, a pro farmer group allowing some of the language that John Deere wanted could mean many thing:
- corruption
- stupidity
- compromise
- the language isn't that bad
Is this whole thing overblown? This is why I like facts, evidence, and proof.
With all of the "yet another worthless Maker projects" all over the place, why not start something like OpenTractor?
After all, do we really need another binary clock or overly-complex conference badge?
The problems faced by the farmers with closed access proprietary technology remind me of the brick wall I ran into trying to find a smart outlet to control a simple 115V hot water recirculation pump.
Every smart device seems to need to talk to to a central plant somewhere to gain authorization. I don't want to speak to Alexa or Google Assistant to control the pump. (I cannot bear the idea of Experian selling logs of my hot-water-recirculation habits to the highest bidder.) All I want is an internal web interface on my internal network similar to what my 15 year old Brother printer gives me, with SSH keys that I manage.
There are some limited open source options that require physically modding some existing smart plugs, but nothing that I could find off the shelf allowed me to be in total control of the smart plug in my environment as I manage it. I don't mind soldering up a fine mess on 5V logic circuits, but I draw the line at hand-soldering boards that carry line voltage. A failed connection could burn down the house. I gave up on the project.
That's not an option for a farmer who relies on a tractor to cash in a crop. In just trying to get a stupid smart plug to work within my infrastructure, I got a taste of what farmers must go through with tractors that go on strike unless they can call home or receive the services of a tech just to restart. What a nightmare.