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