Claiming “Right to Repair,” Farmers Hack Their John Deere Tractors

Big farm equipment now runs run on embedded software which the manufacturer owns and only the dealership has the equipment to diagnose and fix. Faced with daunting economics, not to mention an affront to their self-reliance, some farmers have become hackers. “Look at the size of this machine,” says one farmer, standing next to a combine with tires roughly as tall as he is. “If I had to haul this thing a hundred miles every time something went wrong with it, it would cost a fortune. I mean just to get it on a truck is a thousand bucks.”