John Deere Once Again Pinky Swears It Will Stop Monopolizing Repair

Once just the concern of pissed off farmers and nerdy tinkerers, the last two years have seen a groundswell of broader culture awareness about right to repair," and the perils of letting companies like Apple, John Deere, Microsoft, or Sony monopolize repair options, making repairing things you own both more difficult and way more expensive.

John Deere's draconian repair restrictions on agricultural equipment (and the steady consolidation and reduction in repair options) results in customers having to pay an arm and a leg for service, or drive hundreds of additional, costly miles to get their tractors repaired.

Like Apple and other bigger companies attempting to monopolize repair, John Deere keeps promising that things will soon be different. Like last week, when Deere struck a memorandum of understanding" with the American Farm Bureau Federation promising that the company will make sure farmers have the right to repair their own farm equipment or go to an independent technician:

Dave Gilmore, Deere's vice president of ag and turf marketing, said the company looks forward to working with the farm group and our customers in the months and years ahead to ensure farmers continue to have the tools and resources to diagnose, maintain and repair their equipment."

There are a few problems. One, this memorandum of understanding isn't really binding. It's part of a self-regulatory system the agricultural industry has constructed to pre-empt actual regulation and accountability. Farm Bureau officials will meet occasionally with Deere to try and work out solutions to right to repair" issues, but there's no meaningful enforcement or accountability mechanism here.

The MOU also does something I'd wager was a major reason for the agreement; it requires that the American Farm Bureau Federation avoid supporting any looming right to repair legislation:

AFBF agrees to encourage state Farm Bureau organizations to recognize the
commitments made in this MOU and refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal
or state Right to Repair" legislation that imposes obligations beyond the commitments in this
MOU.

Companies that have constructed lucrative but harmful repair monopolies desperately want to thwart the growing push for right to repair legislation. And they've had significant success in not only killing many such laws before they can be passed, but watering down any bills that do manage to survive as we just saw in New York State.

The other problem is that Deere has made similar promises before.

In late 2018, John Deere and a coalition of other agricultural hardware vendors promised (in a statement of principles) that by January 1, 2021, Deere and other companies would make repair tools, software, and diagnostics readily available to the masses. In short, they managed to stall right to repair laws in several states in exchange for doing the right thing.

That didn't happen. And there's no reason to think it will start happening now. What John Deere (like Apple and every other company monopolizing repair) wants is to do just enough to convince federal lawmakers to back off of new laws and any enforcement with actual teeth. That fairly consistency doesn't actually result in reform, it results in theatrics.