A tractor is a computer with wheels now. That is not a joke. A modern John Deere combine has more lines of code than the software that flew Apollo 11 to the moon. And for over a decade, if that computer threw an error, the farmer who paid $800,000 for the machine could not fix it. Only a Deere dealer could plug in the diagnostic software and clear the code. That meant driving your broken tractor to a dealership during harvest season, when every hour of delay costs real crops.

Farmers hated this. In January 2023, the American Farm Bureau Federation signed a memorandum of understanding with John Deere. Deere agreed to give farmers and independent shops access to the tools, software, and manuals needed to repair their own equipment. In 2024 and 2025, states like Colorado and Oregon passed right-to-repair laws that made this a legal obligation, not a handshake.

Here is why this matters beyond the farm. When a plumber buys a diagnostic tool, or a bike shop buys a proprietary code reader, they are fighting the same fight. The manufacturer wants you locked into their service network. Deere made this concrete: a 2021 estimate put dealer repair markups at 100 percent over what a farmer could do themselves. Locking out repair is not about safety. It is about capturing a revenue stream forever.

The counterargument is that complex machines need trained hands, and a farmer clearing the wrong error code could break something expensive or dangerous. Fair. But farmers already fix their own hydraulics, engines, and transmissions. The software lock was never about competence. It was about control, and Deere’s own concession proves it. They gave in because the pressure worked, not because tractors suddenly got simpler.

The lesson: when a company tells you that you cannot fix the thing you own, they are usually protecting a business model, not you. Farmers spent ten years and a lot of lobbying to prove that. Everyone who owns anything with a chip in it should watch closely, because your car, your phone, and your dishwasher are next.