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Popularity of Older Tractors Boosted by Avoidance of DRM

posted by martyb on Thursday January 09 2020, @09:51PM   
from the tough-row-to-hoe dept.

canopic jug writes:

Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM) technologies affecting new tractors are behind the continuing rise in popularity of the models. Particularly in the midwest, farmers are finding that 40-year-old tractors do the job with less trouble and expense.

Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days — and it's not because they're antiques.

Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren't as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software.

"It's a trend that's been building. It's been interesting in the last couple years, which have been difficult for ag, to see the trend accelerate," said Greg Peterson, the founder of Machinery Pete, a farm equipment data company in Rochester with a website and TV show.

Previously;
Reeducating Legislators on the Right to Repair (2019)
John Deere Just Swindled Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair (2018)
US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software (2015)

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Original Submission

• Re:Where's all your vulture capitalists now? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10 2020, @12:10AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10 2020, @12:10AM (#941698)

  1. It is very capital intensive

  This

  2. A lot of of the existing technology is patented

  Not this. The in-demand tractors the article talks about are 30-40 years old. Any patents applying to an equivalent tractor made today are going to be well past their expiry date.

  3. Just like in the days of Microsoft dominance, big companies have standards for power take off and interfacing their tractors with other tools.

  A little this. The article talks about tractors being retrofitted by the farmers with more modern tech, so you just have to not make your tractors difficult to modify.

  4. As mentioned, big corporate farms are not too affected by this.

  Good! That's one market you don't have to worry about serving then, and you can focus the business on the real customers.

  5. Due to economies of scale, your "libre tractors" would be a lot more expensive than the commodity ones, with less features (think how open source phones are in our world.

  Maybe, maybe not this. It's not like open-source phones though, which are trying to compete with today's latest bells and whistles; the entire point is that the bells and whistles are getting in the way!
  I suspect that with modern practises and tooling, it would be entirely possible to make an affordable replacement to 30-year old tractors.

  6. Leading on from above, your "libre tractors" would be competing with the second hand market, which will be much cheaper.

  Maybe this. However, the article mentions one such tractor was sold second-hand for over $60k! That's more than a fully kitted out Tesla Model 3!

  The farmers seem to want reliability and repairability though, so perhaps the real money is in the parts business.

  Parent

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