A tractor that will not start in planting week is a problem on any farm. On a small operation with one tractor and no backup, it is a crisis. And when the fault is a sensor that costs less than a tank of diesel, but the machine will not run until a dealer's laptop clears the code, the real cost is the service call, the wait, and the days lost in the field.
That is what the right to repair debate is about. It is not a fight over whether farmers may turn a wrench. It is about who holds the software keys a modern machine needs before a repair counts as finished. In 2023 that debate moved further than in any year before it: the manufacturers signed voluntary agreements with the American Farm Bureau Federation, and Colorado passed the first state law written for farm equipment. Here is what each does, what it does not do, and what a small farm can do in the meantime.
Why locked diagnostics hit a small farm hardest
A tractor or combine built in the last fifteen years is a rolling network of controllers and sensors. When something fails, the machine logs a fault code. Reading that code, tracing it to a part, and then telling the controller that a new part has been fitted and calibrated all take software. The memorandum John Deere signed with the Farm Bureau spells out what that software does on its machines: it looks up diagnostic codes, connects to the machine through an Electronic Data Link, and performs the calibrations that need that link (AFBF and John Deere MOU, Section II.A.3). Without it, a correctly replaced part can still leave a machine in limp mode.
For a large operation with a dealer twenty minutes away and a spare machine in the shed, that is an inconvenience. For a small diversified farm it is the difference between fixing the problem on a Saturday morning and losing a week. The farms most likely to run older equipment, far from a dealership, with no backup, are exactly the farms with the least leverage.
The economics are not small either. Kansas State University's farm management association data put machinery at 35 to 40 percent of total costs on a Kansas crop farm, counting depreciation, repairs, fuel and interest (Kansas State University, Machinery Replacement Considerations). The same paper looks back at the 1980s farm crisis, when farmers held on to their equipment and machinery investment per acre fell below 50 dollars, and finds that repair costs stayed steady rather than climbing as the fleet aged. The author's reading is that farmers did more of the work themselves to save cash. He then warns that the pattern may not repeat, because the electronics on today's machines must be accessed before a repair can be done at all. That warning, written in 2017, is the case for the right to repair in two sentences.
It is also why we keep coming back to simplicity as a working principle. A machine you can understand is a machine you can keep. The more a farm depends on one dealer for every fault code, the more fragile it becomes, the same argument we made about decentralization for farmers during the supply shocks of 2020.
What the manufacturer memoranda promise
On January 8, 2023, a memorandum of understanding between the American Farm Bureau Federation and John Deere came into force. CNH Industrial, the parent of Case IH and New Holland, signed one on March 9, 2023 (AFBF and CNH Industrial MOU), AGCO and Kubota followed in May, and CLAAS of America signed on June 14, 2023 (AFBF and CLAAS MOU). The Farm Bureau says the five agreements together cover roughly three quarters of the agricultural machinery sold in the United States (AFBF, Right to Repair).
The Deere document is the template, so it is worth reading what it commits the company to. Deere agrees that any farmer, any technician helping a farmer at the farmer's request, and any independent repair shop will have electronic access, on fair and reasonable terms, to its tools, specialty tools, software and documentation. The list includes Customer Service ADVISOR, the operator, parts and service manuals, product training, and on-board diagnostics through the diagnostic port or a wireless interface. Farmers get the codes and data their own machines generate and can pass them to a repair shop of their choice. For machines with an electronic lock or immobilizer, the manufacturer has to supply the documentation and tools needed to disable and reset it in the course of a repair. And the company agrees not to stop farmers and independent shops from legally fabricating or obtaining tools from a third party for their own use.
Now the limits, which matter just as much. The memorandum does not require Deere to reveal trade secrets, to let anyone override safety features or emissions controls, or to let anyone adjust engine power levels. It does not require the company to sell tools it no longer stocks. And it is explicitly a private arrangement: its stated purpose is a "voluntary private sector commitment to outcomes rather than legislative or regulatory measures." In exchange, the Farm Bureau agreed to encourage its state organizations to refrain from introducing, promoting or supporting right to repair legislation that goes beyond the memorandum, and either side may withdraw on fifteen days' written notice if a state or federal law on the subject is enacted.
There is no court behind any of this. If a farmer thinks a dealer is not living up to the deal, the memorandum lays out a sequence: talk to the dealer in good faith, then bring in the manufacturer, and if the dispute is about a core provision, bring in the Farm Bureau, which publishes a reporting form for that purpose on its right to repair page. Use it. A voluntary agreement is only as strong as the record of complaints that tests it.
What state law requires: Colorado goes first
Colorado's HB23-1011, the Consumer Right to Repair Agricultural Equipment Act, was introduced on January 9, 2023, the day after the Deere memorandum took effect, and signed by the Governor on April 25, 2023. It takes effect on January 1, 2024.
From that date, a manufacturer of agricultural equipment must provide parts, embedded software, firmware, tools, documentation and data so that owners and independent repair providers can diagnose, maintain and repair the equipment. Failing to do so is a deceptive trade practice under state law, which is where the enforcement teeth come from. The act folds farm equipment into Colorado's existing consumer right to repair statutes rather than inventing a separate regime.
Three details are worth knowing. First, the law says plainly that a manufacturer that has signed a nationwide memorandum of understanding is still bound by the statute. Second, the law does not license tampering: owners and independent shops may not deactivate a safety notification system, bring a machine out of compliance with safety or emissions rules, or do anything that evades emissions, copyright, trademark or patent law. Third, the act repeals itself if Congress ever passes a federal agricultural right to repair law.
Colorado is the only state with such a law for farm machinery as this is written, but it is not alone in the debate. The National Conference of State Legislatures counts thirty-three states and Puerto Rico that considered right to repair legislation during the 2023 session, with four enacting laws: Colorado, plus California, New York and Minnesota, whose measures are aimed at consumer electronics and other digital equipment rather than tractors (NCSL, Right to Repair 2023 Legislation). If your state was one of the thirty-three, your state Farm Bureau and your legislators already have a file on this. Being involved means asking them what is in it.
The federal backdrop
There is no federal farm equipment repair law, but two federal actions shape the ground. In July 2021 the White House's executive order on competition encouraged the Federal Trade Commission to consider rules against "unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items, such as the restrictions imposed by powerful manufacturers that prevent farmers from repairing their own equipment" (Executive Order 14036, Section 5(h)(ii)). That is encouragement, not a rule, but it put farm equipment on the federal agenda by name.
The second is a copyright regulation most farmers have never heard of. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it unlawful to circumvent the technical locks on copyrighted software, and the software in a tractor is copyrighted. Every three years the Librarian of Congress grants exemptions, and the one in force today covers "computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of a lawfully acquired motorized land vehicle or marine vessel such as a personal automobile or boat, commercial vehicle or vessel, or mechanized agricultural vehicle or vessel" when circumvention is "a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, repair, or lawful modification of a vehicle or vessel function" (37 CFR 201.40(b)(13)). Two caveats sit inside that text: programs reached through a separate subscription service are excluded, and the exemption is not a safe harbor from Department of Transportation or Environmental Protection Agency rules. In plain terms, getting past the lock to diagnose and fix your own machine is not a copyright violation, but nothing in it obliges anyone to hand you the tools, and it never excuses an emissions defeat.
Practical steps to keep older machines running
The memoranda and the Colorado law change what you can ask for. What you do with that is up to you. These are the steps we would take on a small operation.
Ask before you buy, and get it in writing
Under the memoranda you are entitled to buy the manufacturer's diagnostic software and specialty tools on fair and reasonable terms. Before signing for a machine, new or used, ask the dealer what the diagnostic subscription costs, what cable or adapter it needs, and which manuals come with it. A dealer who cannot answer is telling you something about the next five years.
Buy the manuals
The Deere memorandum names three: operator, parts and service. The parts manual pays for itself the first time you order the right bearing instead of the wrong one. Keep them in the shop, not in the house.
Keep the machine's record
Hours, fault codes, parts fitted, fluids and dates. The memoranda say the codes and real-time data your machine generates must be available to you, and a good log is what turns that data into a diagnosis. It is also what you hand to an independent shop. We have written on choosing farm management software; for a tractor, a notebook on the seat works as well. Who controls that data is a question that is not going away, and we will return to it in a piece on who owns your farm data.
Find your independent shop now, not in April
The best repair resource within fifty miles is often a mechanic who has worked on the same machines for thirty years, and the memoranda give independent shops the same access as farmers. Our service providers and manufacturers directory is one place to start. Acting local means spending repair dollars with the shop that will answer the phone in planting week.
Buy old on purpose
A machine with fewer controllers is a machine with fewer things that need a laptop. The University of Nebraska's Tractor Test Laboratory is the officially designated tractor testing station for the United States, and its reports go back to 1920 (Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory). Before buying a used tractor, read how that model performed under test, measured by people who were not selling it, and pair it with a parts availability check.
Never defeat emissions or safety systems
The memoranda exclude it, the Colorado law prohibits it, and the copyright exemption does not protect it. Beyond the law, a machine with its controls defeated is one you will one day have to insure or sell, and with respect for creation in mind it is simply not what a regenerative farm does. Fix the system; do not delete it.
Budget repairs like the cost they are
If machinery is a third of your costs, repairs deserve their own line in the plan, not a surprise in the cash flow. For the farm that needs a machine and cannot pay cash, we walked through FSA microloans and beginning farmer loans two weeks ago. A well-kept twenty-year-old tractor bought with a microloan beats a new one bought with a payment you cannot make.
Report what does not work
If a dealer refuses to sell you the software, quotes a price that is not fair and reasonable, or will not release your own machine's codes, write it down and send it through the Farm Bureau's reporting form. The memoranda are reviewed by the parties at least twice a year, and the record of what farmers actually ran into is what gets reviewed.
Where this leaves a small farm
As of November 2023, the picture is this. Five manufacturers have promised, in writing but not in law, to sell farmers and independent shops the tools and software that repairs now require. One state has written that promise into statute, with effect from the first day of 2024, and more than thirty others have looked at it. Federal copyright rules let you get past the lock to fix your own machine; no federal rule makes anyone hand you the key.
None of this fixes a tractor. What it does is move the balance a little back toward the person who owns the machine. The rest is the old discipline every farm has always run on: know your equipment, keep its record, find the people who can help, and think long term about every purchase. Winter is the season for it. Pull the machine into the shed, open the manual you just bought, and work through the list before the ground thaws.