The Feds Are Coming for John Deere Over the Right to Repair

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating tractor manufacturer John Deere over long standing allegations that Deere makes its farm equipment hard to repair. The investigation has been ongoing since 2021, and we know more about it now thanks to a court filing made public on Thursday.

A data analytics company called Hargrove & Associates Inc (HAI) who works for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), of which John Deere is a prominent member, filed a court brief in an attempt to quash the FTC’s investigation. The FTC wants HAI to turn over data submitted from AEM about sales, but HAI is saying that the FTC’s request is too broad and could hurt its business.

Court drama aside, HAI spelled out exactly what the FTC is looking for. “The stated purpose of the FTC’s [investigation] is ‘[t]o determine whether Deere & Company, or any other person, has engaged in or is engaging in unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive, collusive, coercive, predatory, exploitative, or exclusionary acts or practices in or affecting commerce related to the repair of agricultural equipment in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act,’” HAI said in the court records.

John Deere has been notorious for years for making its farm equipment hard to repair. Much like today’s cars, John Deere’s farm equipment comes with a lot of computers. When something simple in one of its tractors or threshers breaks, a farmer can’t just fix it themselves. Even if the farmer has the technical and mechanical know-how to make a simple repair, they often have to return to the manufacturer at great expense. Why? The on-board computers brick the machines until a certified Deere technician flips a switch.

Farmers have been complaining about this for years and Deere has repeatedly promised to make its tractors easier to repair. It lied. John Deere equipment was so hard to repair that it led to an explosion in the used tractor market. Old farm equipment made before the advent of onboard computing sold for a pretty penny because it was easier to repair.

In 2022, a group of farmers filed a class action lawsuit against John Deere and accused it of running a repair monopoly. Deere, of course, attempted to get the case dismissed but failed. Last year, the company issued a “memorandum of understanding.” The document was a promise to farmers that it would finally let them repair their own equipment, so long as states didn’t pass any laws around the right to repair.

Chief among Deere’s promises was that it would provide farmers and independent repair shops with the equipment and documentation they needed to repair their equipment. The promises of the memorandum have not come to pass. Senator Elizabeth Warren called Deere out in a letter about all of this on October 2. “Rather than uphold their end of the bargain, John Deere has provided impaired tools and inadequate disclosures,” Warren said in the letter.

Now we know, thanks to HAI’s court filing, that the FTC has been investigating John Deere for at least three years. That’s good news for farmers and anyone who buys groceries.

“We are grateful that the FTC has taken our complaint seriously and is investigating Deere’s conduct. We should be able to fix our own stuff. When farmers can’t access the proprietary software tools which are required to diagnose or complete repairs, that means they have to wait for an authorized technician before they can finish their work,” Nathan Proctor, U.S. PIRG’s senior right to repair campaign director, said in a statement. “The weather doesn’t wait on a dealership’s schedule—a delay could mean the loss of your harvest.”