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

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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  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:19PM (5 children)

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:19PM (#941642)

    That's an interesting question. Why is nobody putting out simpler tractors?

    Would need to see the data; maybe things like this story are incomplete. Perhaps enough someones are buying into the newer tractors that they're still making serious bank off them, and its only the small farms that can't afford them.

    This is just guessing for the kind of thing having more data about the whole problem might show.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:25PM (1 child)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:25PM (#941644) Journal

    Perhaps enough someones are buying into the newer tractors that they're still making serious bank off them, and its only the small farms that can't afford them.

    That's it in a nut shell. Small farmers just don't have the capital to nudge the market. For big ag, it's better to make them go bankrupt and steal their land.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:50PM (#941657)

      Steal their land is no joke. Land here goes between 9 and 10 arms-length, but it isn't uncommon to see desperation prices between 4 and 5 or even less on quick sales or auction. People are beating the shit out of their land with corn on corn or continuous corn to try an make a profit in the short term, but just costing themselves in the long run. It also doesn't help that the margins post-Trump are going negative. On many of my fields, I covered them early to buy time to research alternate crops rather than lose money. Bees seem to like it and my spouse thinks it looks pretty, so there's that. At least the farm isn't our only revenue stream.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:34PM (2 children)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Thursday January 09 2020, @10:34PM (#941649)

    I can think of a few reasons:

    1. It is very capital intensive to set up a complete new factory for factories. Especially in the western world. And if you do by some miracle manage, you have to compete with behemoths which a lot more financial and legal clout than you have.
    2. A lot of of the existing technology is patented, and mostly owned by the large companies. They are unlikely to licence any of them to small firms.
    3. Just like in the days of Microsoft dominance, big companies have standards for power take off and interfacing their tractors with other tools. Third parties build their tools to interface with those tractor interfaces, but if you want your tractor to copy that interface you have to licence the patents mentioned in (2), if the companies would even consider that.
    4. As mentioned, big corporate farms are not too affected by this. They are unlikely to self-maintain their own equipment anyway, but outsource it to maintenance firms (or even the OEM). This affects the small/independent farmer the most.
    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. Usually 3x as expensive as the competition, using two/three generation old tech). Small/indie farmers, who are the target market, are the least able to afford higher costs.
    6. Leading on from above, your "libre tractors" would be competing with the second hand market, which will be much cheaper.

    • (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.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Friday January 10 2020, @01:42AM

      by shortscreen (2252) on Friday January 10 2020, @01:42AM (#941734) Journal

      It may not be possible to make new tractors similar to the 40-year-old ones because of new regulations that those designs would not comply with.