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'Right to repair' taken up by the ACCC in farmers' fight to fix their own tractors:
The 'right to repair' movement has finally bent the ear of Australia's competition and consumer watchdog, the ACCC, in its pleas to be able to fix their own farm equipment.
[...] Farmers have emerged as an unlikely force in the global right to repair movement.
The movement eschews the disposable culture of consumer electronics in favour of letting independent repairers and home tinkerers fix broken smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Proponents want access to the code that makes modern machines hum, putting them at loggerheads with tech giants including Apple who own the proprietary software.
In the United States, farmers have risked voiding their warranties by hacking their own John Deere tractors with torrented software so they can carry out their own repairs.
[...] In its first deep dive into the modern agricultural machinery market, the ACCC published its discussion paper on the matter in late February and is seeking accounts from those who buy and use farm machinery, or repair it for a living.
"Broadacre croppers with large tractors, harvesters, seeders … and particularly tractors seem to be an area of some contention," Mr Keogh said.
"We have heard from dealers who say that they have no issues with providing service, yet we hear from independent service providers that they can't get access to the [software] diagnostic tools they need.
"In some cases they can't get access to the [manufacturers'] parts they need.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 22 2020, @07:30PM (2 children)
Why, yes, tinkering in the barn, improving the machinery, or inventing machinery, coming up with inventive solutions for various problems, is certainly a productive use of time and labor. That's very much a tradition in the Midwest. Farmers are always watching out for good ideas and scheming how to save themselves labor. The more efficiently they can farm, the more land they can work.
They'll certainly put their backs into a job when there's no getting around the manual labor, but if there is a way to mechanize it that isn't too costly or unwieldy, they'd rather do that. If mindless labor seems so Midwestern to people around you, they've been eating up too much anti-farmer propaganda, about the Midwest being "flyover country", Iowa being nothing but a giant, flat cornfield, and farmers being dumb country bumpkins and hicks.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 22 2020, @07:48PM
In the early 2000s, I'd still meet the occasional hick who was proud of sleeping without air conditioning in their home, but starting since the 1970s or so - air conditioned cabs have moved from something for wimps to pretty much expected equipment. They'll still step out and load 80lb bags on a pallet when called for, but it's a simple fact: the machines that take care of you get more work done by you. I've seen it in myself, and had a local call it out for me when he said "I'm sorry, I'm having a brain infarction, can you explain that again?" - hard work in the heat does lower I.Q. - temporarily in most cases, but it's a real effect.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 23 2020, @02:52PM
You just reminded me of a roommate I had when I was 20. Pretty good guy, overall, but he had an annoying habit of always matching your best story with one even better. Some guys are just like that. Scott listened to a few of us talking about the hills and mountains we grew up on, and immediately inflated Iowa dunes or whatever into mountain ranges. Someone looked up Iowa's highest and lowest elevations, and exclaimed, "My backyard varies more than your whole state!" The guy was hard to live with for weeks after that!
Yeah, I know, off topic, but hill people can't resist poking a little fun at flatlanders, especially those with tall tales to tell!!