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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) by aclarke on Friday January 10 2020, @04:34PM
It depends on the tractor you're buying. A $25k 30hp compact utility tractor will be relatively simple. A $500k tractor is going to have GPS-assisted auto-steer, complex telematics, communication with implements so that it knows, for example, to change the seeding or fertilizing rate based on its location in the field, etc. etc.
There's also the fact that tractors have to operate with lower emissions, which means more complex emissions systems that are increasingly driven by software. This makes all machinery contain more electronics just to meet regulatory requirements.