John Deere Just Lost to the Farmers It Bullied for 10 Years!

 

 

#JohnDeere #RightToRepair #Farmers

 

 

John Deere Just Lost to the Farmers It Bullied for 10 Years! For 10 years, 

 

John Deere told American farmers a simple thing. You own the tractor, but you are not allowed to fix it. When a machine went down in the middle of harvest, only a John Deere dealer had the full software to bring it back to life, and the farmer paid for every mile, every hour, and every diagnostic fee. On July 8, 2026, that ended. The Federal Trade Commission, along with five states, secured a settlement requiring Deere for the next 10 years to give farmers and independent repair providers the same repair resources, including software, that it gives its authorized dealers. 

 

This is the story of how it happened. Deere makes the only software repair tools capable of performing all electronic repairs on its equipment, and it had made those tools available only to its own dealers. It is the story of a decade of broken promises. In a January 2023 memorandum of understanding, Deere promised farmers and independent shops access to the tools and information they needed, while the American Farm Bureau agreed to back off support for right to repair legislation. Deere had signed a similar deal with the California Farm Bureau in 2018 as a repair bill was about to pass, then never honored it. And it is the story of what that cost. Repair restrictions cost United States farmers an estimated 4.2 billion dollars a year and led them to miss key crop windows. 

 

 It is also the story of the people who refused to let it go. The row crop farmers, custom harvest crews, and small town mechanics who kept records and kept pushing until a federal agency finally listened. A few months earlier, in a separate case, Deere had already agreed to pay 99 million dollars to settle a class action accusing it of monopolizing repair services, covering equipment owners who paid for major repairs going back to January 2018.

 

 

Source:       Acreon