It's not often that a story about the intricacies of repairing agricultural tractors hits the headlines worldwide - but that's precisely what happened just recently.
An article featured on the online magazine Motherboard, an off-shoot of the Vice media company, about the apparent phenomenon of American farmers 'hacking' the software in their John Deere tractors to carry out their own repairs caused quite a stir.
The story written by journalist Jason Koebler (which can be read in full here) was picked up by mainstream news outlets across the web, including Mail Online and The Guardian in the UK.
The story proposed that increasing numbers of farmers in the U.S, frustrated with Deere’s “draconian locks” on the tractors they buy, were turning to illegal downloads of firmware from Ukrainian websites, to ‘hack’ their tractors – allowing them to perform ‘unauthorised repairs’.
It is explained in the article that a licence agreement John Deere required US farmers to sign back in October forbids nearly all private repair and modification to farming equipment, and prevents farmers from suing for “crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment … arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software”.
The agreement applies to anyone who turns the key or otherwise uses a John Deere tractor with embedded software. It means that only John Deere dealerships and 'authorised' repair shops can work on newer tractors - which some tractor owners see as an affront to their freedom to repair their tractor as they see fit.
It leads to larger questions about who ultimately 'owns' the equipment, with Koebler saying “..a fear I heard expressed over and over again in talking with farmers, is that John Deere could remotely shut down a tractor and there wouldn't be anything a farmer could do about it.”
Farmers are quoted in the piece who are now fighting for 'right to repair' legislation to be implemented in Nebraska, with seven other states apparently considering similar.
Koebler quotes an anonymous farmer-repairer who says of this culture of illegal downloads, "There's software out there a guy can get his hands on if he looks for it."
He continues, "I'm not a big business or anything, but let's say you've got a guy here who has a tractor and something goes wrong with it - the nearest dealership is 40 miles away, but you've got me or a diesel shop a mile away. The only way we can fix things is illegally, which is what's holding back free enterprise more than anything and hampers a farmer's ability to get stuff done, too."
The article concludes at an impasse between John Deere and the farmers who want to be able to personally amend all aspects of their tractors, including its software. Deere is quoted saying, "When a customer buys John Deere equipment, he or she owns the equipment. As the owner, he or she has the ability to maintain and repair the equipment." Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, a trade organisation fighting for right-to-repair legislation, meanwhile disagrees. He tells Koebler, "Some of our members have repeatedly attempted to buy the diagnostics that are referenced [from John Deere] and been rebuffed."
At this time of going to press Service Dealer has approached John Deere about their views on the subjects which the article addresses – when we get an official response back we shall bring that to you.
In the meantime, what do our dealer readers think about this? Should tractor owners have the right to ‘fix’ their own tractor if they so wish – or should it always only be an authorised dealer?
Could Deere’s hard-line approach possibly alienate farmers from servicing dealers?
And looking forward, do you think this type of software we see today on large agricultural tractors will begin to spread to groundcare equipment?
Please leave a comment below to let us know your thoughts.
