SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10 2020, @08:29AM (1 child)
Sounds like they used broken and not trained horses. When the horse sees you, other people, and its partner as companions in a herd, rather than an obstacle to be avoided, they react very differently. Plus draft animals are much colder than the much hotter riders, which makes them much harder to provoke and less likely to bolt in general. Sure the tractor is faster and you don't have to worry about hydrating it, resting it, feeding it, etc., while working but, as I said, it comes down to the particular size of the farm and the other uses you can get out of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:58AM
I was gonna say - a lot of it is the personality of the animal, and a lot of that is how they've been treated. A working plowhorse rearing? I never once saw a clydesdale rear up. But people who treat their work animals badly get bit and kicked; it's tit-for-tat.