I am for "right to repair" but one thing that has been left out of this narrative/discussion, in this article, and elsewhere is that when making payments there are insurance and/or warranty riders on these contracts when John Deere is providing the financing. They do this because they want the equipment repaired in a manner that meets JD's engineering specs. On the flip side I have seen certified JD mechanics, at a dealership, break off something as simple as the BlueDef/urea tank on a tractor because they didn't know how to fix it, forcing the tractor to remain in the shop while parts were reordered. In return they lent a similar tractor out at no charge because hay was already on the ground and rain was coming. This works well when the dealership is literally 6 miles down the road...not so good when its 60 or 160.
Sorry for being naive, I am not american. Can you tell, why those farmers aren't buying tractors from other companies? Those news always contain Deere name, I don't see similar critique against say Valtra or Belarus.
Because they can't. I was going at this to the parent post. What JD offers in addition to the warranty riders, is a logistics and service network that's INSANE. when you buy a big tractor/combine/machine you get white glove service. Tractor breaks in the field? A field tech will come out and fix it, quickly. Have a dumb question about the length and width of cutter heads? they'll answer it. When you only really have 2 weeks to harvest 1000s of acres this service network can not be under stated. This is what's really locking people in. The software is a contributing factor, but it's not why farmers buy green.
No they can. There are a lot of other brands with similar support like Fendt or Massey. The reason everyone gets JD machines is that for their specific purpose they’re generally the best barring a few niche markets like what Ventrac targets with their mowers.
> The reason everyone gets JD machines is that for their specific purpose they’re generally the best
At least the best at marketing. A big time operator friend of mine, with a fleet of predominately Deere equipment, ordered a new CaseIH tractor a couple of years ago. Before it even showed up on the farm, John Deere caught wind of the purchase and swooped in to make him an offer he couldn't refuse, buying out the never used CaseIH tractor from him, and getting him into a green machine instead.
Of course, us smaller farmers look to what the bigger farmers are doing to gain some insight into how they are successful, as people do. When you see the big guys running Deere equipment, it is easy to think that Deere helped them achieve the success they have, and if you buy Deere equipment you will also be successful. But there is some smoke and mirrors going on.
I have a few different brands on my farm. As far as getting the job done, I'm not sure any are better than any other. They all break down just the same. However, John Deere does seem to have an edge on operator comfort. Which, admittedly, is nice on the long days.
In the town that I grew up in, there was a family-owned farming implement dealership were you could buy farming equipment from a variety of manufacturers.
That dealership has now been replaced with a John Deere-only dealership. From what I was told, nowadays John Deere only wants to sell to dealerships who exclusively sell John Deere equipment, so they had pressured the previous dealership.
So I think that's been a factor in the consolidation of farming equipment dealerships, which are now further apart and siloed into different manufacturers. It's not a healthy/competitive market for farm equipment buyers.
They dominate the market in big tractors. New Holland probably sell close to as many units in the US (can't find good figures for this now), but John Deere have the bigger and more expensive ones and have 4x the revenue.
I'd guess farms and fields tend to be bigger in the US, making the economies of scale work in favour of bigger tractors.
John Deere tractors have held their value historically better than Kubota, Mahindra, New Holland, and Massey Ferguson. These are the main dealers in our area. I can't speak for the midwest.
One of the reasons they are holding their value is that nobody wants to buy the new ones and get screwed by this predatory DRM. It's a similar situation to the value of diesel pickup trucks the model year before certain emissions standards came into effect
In some areas of tech people only buy Intel. AMD might sell cheaper chips but people that place a premium on floating point performance, e.g. because they do 3D modelling, aren't going to be interested. Your gamer who has similar demands might go for price (so they can spend more money on games).
If it is the main tool for your job then you aren't going to want anything less than the best. John Deere seem to have that going for their business strategy.
The tractor business model reminds me of how workstations and mini-computers were sold with vendor lock in. That market didn't survive the 1990's and the onslaught of affordable PCs. There is nothing on the horizon to disrupt the tractor business, it is not as if new affordable mega-tractors are going to come along at ordinary car prices to encourage masses of people to go 'back to the land' and put the likes of John Deere in difficulties.
Bigger and bigger agri-business can't go on forever though, it is built on assumptions about the inputs. Half of the food on my plate tonight comes from places too far away for me to ever fly to myself, but, if climate change action is to happen then my diet and everyone else's will have to be a lot more locally sourced.
> Half of the food on my plate tonight comes from places too far away for me to ever fly to myself, but, if climate change action is to happen then my diet and everyone else's will have to be a lot more locally sourced.
An excellent point that I've have views about for years. Reckon we need to cover this under a separate topic as it's a huge one and covers such issues about what is and is not or should not be permitted under capitalism and free trade as we understand them today.
It's been a long time since the bank foreclosed on my boyhood farming days, and I have been as far away from tractor news as possible ever since.
Is nobody else making tractors anymore?
I remember John Deere tractors being the very cream of the crop: are they still well-made and revered for it?
What a weird world. We would have been incredulous to be told that one day we wouldn't be able to repair our tractors without computers. That was back in the TRS-80 era, for reference...
"Tractor" is something of a loaded term, implying simplicity and so on. It sounds like some of the products JD makes today could be more accurately thought of as "Robot Tractors".
But if you can repair your own tractor, that should be less issue, compared situation where every trouble needs dealer help? I try to understand situation here: so Deere is being several years unsupportive for third party repairs and still best option? Why other tractor selling companies don't try to capture that market or why farmers don't cooperate to bring some other dealers in? For me seems like there are other initiatives (values in Deere) or this issue isn't big enough to make farmers (and other manufacturers) react.
