Wisconsin lawmakers, attorney general, push for ‘right to repair’ farm equipment

An effort to give farmers the “right to repair” their own tractors and other equipment has taken off in Wisconsin in recent weeks.

State Attorney General Josh Kaul recently joined a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission against the manufacturer of John Deere equipment. 

The lawsuit alleges that Deere & Company only makes a diagnostic repair tool available to their authorized dealers, preventing farmers from repairing their own equipment or using independent service providers. The FTC and four other states argue the practice has allowed Deere to maintain monopoly power over the repair market.

A group of Democratic state lawmakers has also put forward a bill to require farm equipment manufacturers to make repair documents, parts and tools available at fair costs and terms. 

“We need to fix this anti-competitive, monopolistic practice that is currently taking place, and let farmers repair the equipment that they have purchased and they own,” said state Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, who co-authored the bill.

The legislation makes an allowance for manufacturers to protect trade secrets. Pfaff said farm equipment has become more sophisticated and companies should be able to protect their intellectual property. But he said the market needs more competition to ensure a fair price for repairs.

“When you have a situation where the farm manufacturer can exclusively determine how and the price that a piece of equipment is going to be repaired, that leads to a situation in which the competitive marketplace really doesn’t exist,” he said.

Pfaff said the bill goes beyond the FTC lawsuit by requiring all farm equipment manufacturers, not just John Deere, to make repair tools available. He said he’s hopeful the issue will gain bipartisan support in the state Legislature this session.

Farmer groups disagree on best path for holding manufacturers accountable

The issue of “right to repair” has been raised by farm advocates across the country for years, but has failed to gain traction as federal legislation. Colorado is the only state that has enacted a state right to repair law, but similar legislation is currently up being considered in Montana.

In 2023, The American Farm Bureau Federation signed a memorandum of understanding with John Deere and other brands, in which the equipment manufacturers committed to making repair and diagnostic tools more available.

Jason Mugnaini, executive director of government relations for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, said his organization continues to support farmers’ right to repair their own equipment. But he questioned whether a lawsuit or legislation was needed because of the national agreements, which established a dispute resolution process for people struggling to access repair materials.

“This is really a direct path to reach manufacturers to really immediately resolve repair issues that could potentially arise, and we’ve seen this be effective,” Mugnaini said.

He said the Wisconsin Farm Bureau is still reviewing the new bill from Pfaff and other lawmakers, which is still circulating for co-sponsorship. Mugnaini said they’re hopeful the legislation would allow for farmers to continue to use the dispute resolution process through Farm Bureau.

“If there’s something where you have to go to the government, file a resolution, there’s an appeals process, that could potentially slow the process down a little bit, and we don’t want to have that,” he said.

But Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, said that while the memorandum of understanding had quieted calls for a right to repair law, it had not made it easier for farmers to work on their own tractors.

Von Ruden said some of his group’s members have been fixing their John Deere tractors for years, but are frustrated by the lack of access to modern repair tools.

“Anything that’s probably 15 years old or older, most mechanics can fix that equipment,” he said. “But the newer stuff that has electronic diagnostics on it and more electronics, if you want to really figure out what’s going on, you need this program that you can put into your laptop and get the diagnostics through that.”

Some skeptics of right to repair efforts have questioned whether farmers or standard mechanics have the technical expertise needed to fix the computer systems on tractors. But Von Ruden said having access to the necessary diagnostic tools is the first step in allowing producers and service providers to build these skills.