American Farm Bureau Continues To Sell Out Farmers On Meaningful ‘Right To Repair’ Reform

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the we-100%-mean-it-this-time dept

We’ve noted how agricultural machinery giants like John Deere have spent several years waging war on independent tractor repair shops in a bid to monopolize maintenance and drive up costs. We’ve also noted that every time industry promises to stop doing this, it turns out they’re largely full of shit.

With John Deere now facing increased action on “right to repair” reform in Congress, at the DOJ, and in numerous states, the company has been trying to pre-empt reform by striking silly, pointless memorandums of understanding with key agricultural groups.

For example last January, John Deere struck such a deal with the American Farm Bureau Federation, claiming it would do a better job of making repair manuals and parts available to independent repair shops and farmers, if the Farm Bureau agreed to never support right to repair legislative reform.

The problem: the agreement wasn’t actually binding, pre-empted real reform with real penalties, and John Deere already had a long history of empty promises on this front.

This week, the American Farm Bureau Federation struck another similar memorandum of understanding, but this time with another agricultural giant with a history of attempting to monopolize repair: CNH Industrial. It’s effectively the same as the John Deere deal; CNH Industrial pinky swears that it will try a little bit, in exchange for the AFBF agreeing to not support meaningful legislative reform.

Right to repair activists at organizations like PIRG aren’t particularly impressed:

Our key criticism of the Deere MOU was that it did not provide farmers with reasonable paths to recourse should the manufacturer deny them repair materials. And the manufacturer could walk away from the agreement with a mere 30 days’ notice.

Both of these are true for the CNH Industrial MOU as well. As a result, farmers are at real risk of being left out in the cold without what they need to fix equipment they spend up to $800,000 for. That’s not an acceptable outcome.

Industry giants aren’t going to meaningfully adhere to voluntary pinky swear agreements. They’re simply trying to delay the inevitable implementation of state and federal right to repair guidelines with actual teeth. Organizations claiming to represent constituents and keen on real reform probably wouldn’t be letting their organizations be used as props toward that end.

Filed Under: consumer rights, reform, right to repair, right to repair legislation, tractors
Companies: american farm bureau, cnh, john deere