This commentary is by Maddie Kempner, policy director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont.
Generosity and mutual support define Vermont’s farming community. Farming listservs and social media accounts buzz steadily with farmers sharing everything from pest control strategies to bulk fencing orders.
Farmers know through experience that we are stronger when we are interdependent; safer when we share our resources, time, skills and effort with our community members. This might raise an eyebrow to those outside the farming community: After all, aren’t these people business competitors? But farmers understand what many of us have forgotten: We are only as resilient as our trust and reciprocal relationships.
It’s an unfortunate irony, then, that many of the corporations supplying farmers with their equipment aren’t moved by this same spirit.
Under the guise of safety or the protection of trade secrets, equipment manufacturers (think John Deere and the like) are using monopolistic practices to curtail farmers’ ability to fix equipment they have purchased. In fact, companies across a wide range of industries — from cellphones to automobiles — are making it increasingly difficult for users to repair products they own without going back to the manufacturer.
When the majority of today’s farmers got their start, most farm equipment could be fixed with the right skills and basic tools or a call to the local repair shop. In recent years, however, tractors and other farm machinery increasingly require computer-based diagnostics and software in addition to that hard-earned mechanical knowhow.
While many farmers still can and do repair the mechanical aspects of their equipment when it breaks down, manufacturers often limit access to necessary diagnostic tools and software to authorized technicians, making it impossible for a farmer to get a machine up and running again quickly. In some cases, technicians have to be flown in from out of state simply to clear a code, forcing farmers to wait days or weeks. In the meantime, their crops and/or profitability suffer, while local repair job opportunities dry up.
Imagine your car has a check-engine light on and won’t start. There doesn’t appear to be anything mechanically wrong, and you need it to get to work in the morning, but the dealer tells you that you’ll have to wait a week for a specialized mechanic to fly in from Kansas City to plug in a computer and turn off the light. Worse, you’ve lost a week’s pay not being able to drive to work.
Farmers survive on thin margins and rely on the ability to address challenges in a timely way, including making necessary repairs to their equipment when it breaks. Especially in Vermont’s wet climate and short growing season, favorable weather conditions for planting, haying, or other field work are often rare and always precious.
A bill moving through Vermont’s Legislature seeks to address this by requiring manufacturers of agriculture and forestry equipment to make tools, parts and software available to end users or independent repair shops, not just dealerships. Passage of H.81 will not only support farmers, but also help to establish a more robust, competitive market for parts and service that generates business opportunities and strengthens our rural economies.
Passage of fair repair laws represents a step in the right direction for all of us, not just farmers.
Manufacturers of farm and forestry equipment are unfortunately not unique in their business practices. Makers of everything from smartphones to coffee makers to medical equipment are increasingly monopolizing the market for parts and repairs, or simply designing their products to be disposable. These practices lead to fewer choices, higher costs, fewer local jobs, and a level of extraction and waste that our planet can no longer sustain.
The right to repair is a sweeping campaign targeting these practices and restoring an ethic of reuse, car, and repair to our relationship with all manner of “stuff.” Vermont’s right to repair bill is part of this larger movement that’s starting to gain steam, and yet again, our farmers are on the front lines.
On April 25, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed hopefully the first of many agricultural fair repair bills into law. Starting in 2024, equipment manufacturers in Colorado will have to give farmers a fairer shake.
Now, Vermont has the opportunity to follow suit and show the nation that while we care for and support each other, we also want the right to do it ourselves.
