By DOUG GRAVES

Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The ability to maintain their own equipment is a big deal to farmers. When it’s harvest time and the combine goes kaput, they can’t wait several days for the dealership to send out a repair technician.

And, farmers are a pretty handy bunch. They’ve been fixing their own equipment for a long time.

“We simply bought a new or used part, replaced the broken piece and that was it,” said Wilmington, Ohio, farmer Dale Spencer. The 49-year-old tends to roughly 1,400 acres beside his father. “Unfortunately, today’s repairs are more complicated.

“A component in the guidance system on our sophisticated John Deere tractor went on the blink last fall and since the Moline, Illinois-based company no longer supports our vehicle’s system, we were staring at a $2,500 bill for a used electrical part. Manufacturers won’t provide independent shops with the guides or technology that would allow us to fix it, and Deere won’t repair older parts if it no longer supports them.

“We were pretty much in a no-win situation.”

Farmers representing 17 states have been at the battlefront of this situation, attempting and hoping for legislation that would allow them to independently work on sophisticated farm tractor parts themselves. But recently producers from California threw yet another wrench in others’ hopes when a state farmers’ lobbying group signed away their right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software.

“Where California farmers go, the rest of America follows, and in this case that’s dangerous,” Spencer explained. “The state produces more food by far than any other in the nation. This state accounts for two-thirds of all U.S.-grown fruit and nuts.”

As an organization representing 2.5 million agriculture jobs, the California Farm Bureau (CFB) gave up the right to purchase repair parts without going through a dealer. Last March, the state introduced its Electronics Right to Repair Act. According to Jason Koebler of Motherboard, right after the bill was introduced, the farm equipment manufacturers in California started circulating a flyer titled Manufacturers and Dealers Support Commonsense Repair Solutions.

“In that document, they promised to provide manuals, guides and other information by model year 2021,” he said, “but the flyer insisted upon a distinction between a right to repair a vehicle and a right to modify software, a distinction that gets murky when software controls all of a tractor’s operation.

“That flyer is strikingly similar to the agreement the California Farm Bureau just brokered. Both list the same four restrictions: no resetting of immobilizer systems, no reprogramming electronic control units or engine control modules, no changing equipment or engine settings that might negatively affect emissions or safety and no downloading or accessing the source code of any proprietary embedded software.

“These restrictions are enormous,” Koebler said. “If car mechanics couldn’t reprogram car computers, a good portion of modern repairs just wouldn’t be possible. When you hire a mechanic to fix the air-conditioning in a Civic, they may have to reprogram the electronic control unit. When electronics control the basic functions of all major farm equipment, a single malfunctioning sensor can bring a machine to its knees.”

“Bottom line is, this means that farmers can’t change engine settings, can’t retrofit old equipment with new features and can’t modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own,” Spencer added.

He and other farmers have pushed for “right-to-repair” legislation, which would require manufacturers to provide the same information and parts to farmers or independent repair shops as they do the manufacturers’ own repair shops. But the latest move by the CFB is seen as a setback for those in other parts of the country who want to be able to repair their own equipment, without have a dealership imprint on the repair process.

“Why spend thousands of dollars on an easy fix?” said Kyle Wiens, co-founder and CEO of iFixit, an online repair community and parts retailer (at www.ifixit.com) internationally renowned for its open-source repair manuals and product teardowns. “But as agricultural equipment gets more and more sophisticated and electronic, the tools needed to repair equipment are increasingly out of reach of the people who rely on it most.

“That’s amplified by the fact that John Deere, and the other equipment companies represented by the Far West Equipment Dealers Association, have been exploiting copyright laws to lock farmers out of their own stuff.”

All three agree that repair is huge business and repair monopolies are profitable, citing Apple as an example of a company that lobbied repeatedly against making repair parts and information available to third-party repair shops.

“That’s why John Deere and other ‘Big Ag’ companies are so reluctant to make any concessions to the growing right-to-repair movement,” Spencer said. “At first glance, (the recent) deal between the California Farm Bureau and the equipment dealers might look like a win for farmers, as the press release describes how equipment dealers have agreed to provide access to service manuals, product guides, on-board diagnostics and other information that would help a farmer identify a repair program with machinery.

“That’s fine – but without access to parts and diagnostics software, it’s not enough to enable farmers to fix their own equipment. This is not right-to-repair. At the end of the day, I bought this equipment, and I want everything I need to keep it running without relying on the manufacturer or dealer.”

Spencer said farmers like him face two technological hurdles: first, the electronics are nearly impossible to repair. Second, they may not have the legal right to try fixing it.

“What’s ironic, farmers may not even own the tractor for which they paid $500,000,” he said. “Some manufacturers argue that they own the intellectual property – in other words, the electronics. The electronics are what makes the machine function. Without their base code, the tractor will not function. Therefore, some say the manufacturer still owns the tractor.”

Much of the groundwork for right-to-repair legislation has been coordinated by Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Assoc. of New York.