Right to repair

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NICK EICHER, HOST: For farmers, timing is everything—and waiting days for a dealership repair on a critical piece of equipment can mean losing a crop.

Now, federal agencies say farmers and independent mechanics ought to be free to fix their own equipment.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week announced the “Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework.” It represents a partial deregulation of agriculture. The Environmental Protection Agency went along, too, saying the “right to repair” would not violate environmental laws.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: “Right-to-repair” may sound like it should be obvious. But it’s part of a long-running turf war between equipment manufacturers and farmers and mechanics who want free-market services.

WORLD’s Todd Vician has our story.

SOUND: Excavator machine starting

TODD VICIAN: Luke McDonald tends 75 acres southeast of San Antonio and leases another 200 acres nearby. He and his family, and a growing number of hands, plant and harvest crops, and raise chickens, cows, pigs, ducks, and even emus. 

Every minute of the day matters, especially during harvest season.

LUKE MCDONALD: If you're harvesting, we do hay and sorghum, and I have a window. I got to cut it, and if I wait, the product can go bad, the fields can get too muddy to operate in, you can miss your windows …

And it gets worse if equipment breaks down.

MCDONALD: We can go into total emergency mode, where everything is refocused on getting one piece of equipment up.

Over the years, tractors and farm implements have gotten bigger, more complicated, and harder to keep running. 

Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, and a third-generation cattle farmer, explains why the right-to-repair fight is such fertile ground now.

GARY WERTISH: Now the farmer buys that equipment, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars, then he’s held captive. We just want access if something goes wrong.

Ninety-two percent of farmers surveyed in a 2022 poll said they believe they could save money if they had better access to independent repair technicians or could make all repairs themselves. More than three-quarters said they buy and fix or upgrade older equipment to avoid the restrictions from manufacturers protecting their intellectual property and profits.

MCDONALD: If you have a piece of equipment go down in the field and you're reliant on a mobile mechanic to come to you, then you may not have them show up for a day, two days, it may be a week...

But farm-equipment manufacturers have long maintained the Clean Air Act prohibits them from selling tools and giving access to diagnostics to farmers or independent repair technicians. They say the government could hold manufacturers responsible if a customer making repairs tampers with parts that control emissions.

Ross Pifer directs the Center for Agricultural and Shale Law at Penn State Dickinson Law, and also served as a U.S.D.A. attorney.

ROSS PIFER: This letter from EPA makes it abundantly clear that Deere isn’t going to be liable in that situation.

The EPA’s rebuke of John Deere this month wasn’t the first time the environmental agency weighed in. It said three years ago that the Clean Air Act doesn’t restrict who can make repairs. The agency also said at the same time that Congress was telling manufacturers to stop steering work away from independent technicians.

PIFER: I don’t think the recent EPA action really plowed any new ground... I think the fact that the EPA took this action indicates that there is at least some desire to keep this issue kind of on the front burner.

John Deere officials said they will soon make tools available to temporarily override emissions systems when repairing equipment. Manufacturers favor voluntary actions instead of legislation or lawsuits. 

They negotiated an agreement with the American Farm Bureau Federation in 2023. That agreement gives farmers access to error codes, specialty tools, and information to make repairs without going through dealerships.

GARY WERTISH: It really hasn't changed anything.

The nonbinding agreement didn’t stave off lawsuits. One ongoing trial involves the Federal Trade Commission and alleges John Deere’s actions inflate farmers’ repair costs, degrade their ability to make timely repairs, and violate federal and state antitrust laws.

MCDONALD: I have a John Deere baler, and the hydraulics you can only get from John Deere, and the seal kits are really weird, and so you're hammered into a position of, all the places I’ve brought them to have been like, ‘We can’t repair this.’

Wertish passed his 500-acre farm to his son, and he hopes the renewed federal interest in farmers’ right to repair will produce lasting relief.

WERTISH: Sometimes you have to go as maybe a couple hours to even get to a dealership. So having more opportunities there would be a help for rural America.

In Texas, McDonald reinstalls a tread that came off a very used excavator while working on fencing at the farm he also hopes to pass to his son. Two hours later, he calculates how far he’s off his goal for the day and the project.

MCDONALD: Our profit margins are not very good, and anything that happens, you can't prepare for it. You hope you can, you do what you can prepare for, but those hit the bottom line hard.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician, near Seguin, Texas.

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