DENVER — After passing a law last year to allow wheelchair users in Colorado to repair their own equipment, state lawmakers are now considering a bill that would offer similar rights to farmers and ranchers.
House Bill 23-1011 requires manufacturers to provide parts, embedded software, firmware, tools, diagnostics information, maintenance documents, repair manuals and more to owners of farm and ranch equipment or repair service providers to allow them to perform work on their equipment.
“People should be able to fix their stuff, and I think most people take this as a given. If something you own breaks, you expect that you'll be able to either pop the hood or take off the control panel or take off the case and get in there and see what's broken and fix it,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group.
Increasingly, though, Katz says farm equipment runs on software that gives manufacturers the right to withhold information from consumers, which can drive up costs, threaten harvest and undermine the marketplace of independent repairs.
Currently, manufacturers have the right to withhold this information and require people to have their equipment serviced by a dealer.
The bill stipulates that any manufacturer that withholds repair information starting in January 2024 would be considered to be participating in a deceptive trade practice and could face a civil penalty of up to $20,000 for each violation. If the manufacturer continually violates this right to repair, a court order or injunction could be issued to force the manufacturer to comply.
“Farming is a business built on tight timelines and thin margins. Giving producers the freedom to repair their equipment will give Colorado farmers a leg up,” said Rep. Ron Weinberg, R-Loveland.
Weinberg says when he started speaking to his constituents about the issue, every farmer he spoke with said right to repair was an issue they cared about. One farmer even admitted to using third-party proprietary software from Russia to make repairs on his equipment, according to Weinberg.
HB 23-1011 comes two years after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed the Federal Trade Commission to come up with rules that would limit manufacturers from preventing third-party and DIY repairs.
The bill also comes one month after manufacturer Deere & Co. signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the American Farm Bureau Federation that ensures farmers can repair their own equipment or take it to an independent shop. The memorandum aims to tackle the right to repair issue through the private sector rather than having state governments step in. However, bill co-sponsor Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, says the memorandum only applies to John Deere without addressing the larger issue.
Beyond that, Titone points out that John Deere entered into a similar agreement with California in 2018 but never honored the agreement.
“There's a lot of apprehensive feelings about what an MOU really means based on the history that they've done. So, this MOU doesn't go quite as far as farmers would like,” Titone said.
Similarly, the current MOU features a portion that allows John Deere to back out of the agreement if state legislatures pass their own right to repair laws so long as it gives 15 days’ notice.
Titone says while the federal government has expressed interest in the topic, Congress moves slowly, so this is better for the state to address first, pointing to similar legislation passed by Massachusetts to allow consumers to repair their own cars, which lead to nationwide changes.
“For over 20 years, most consumers have had the right to repair the most expensive equipment: a car that they tend to own. We just want the same thing for farm equipment,” said Chad Franke, president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union.
He thinks the MOU is beneficial but wants a legislative fix.
Farmer perspective
Danny Wood is a fourth-generation dryland farmer from Peetz, Colorado, who grows corn, wheat and more.
In 2021, he bought a one-year-old tractor for $23,000. The next year, when he went to hook it up to his planter, it wouldn’t control the fertilizer correctly.
Wood called the dealer, who said it would take a few days and $8,500 to unlock that feature. He paid the money, but two days later, the tractor had the same issue. So Wood called the repair shop once again and was told it would take three more days to get out to his property to put the code back in to allow for the override. That visit cost him another $950.
“That's when we should have been planting, and you only have a certain size of a window to plant because there's a crop insurance deadline,” Wood said.
This is not the first time Wood has had issues like this. His combine broke down and showed an error message on the screen. He tried to call the dealer to ask them what the code meant, but was told a repair technician needed to come out to take a look.
It turns out some of the tubes were cracked, but they were out of stock with the dealer. So Wood drove more than 100 miles to a place in Nebraska to buy them, but was told if he repairs the tubes, it will affect the warranty on the equipment.
“There's no reason you should sit for five to 10 days with a piece of equipment that's under warranty when it's just a simple thing you can fix yourself,” he said.
Wood worries that having equipment sit around will affect his bottom line and that of other farmers around the state, which could drive up food prices. He testified in favor of the bill, saying he doesn’t want to fight with the machinery dealership but wants the chance to fix his own equipment more quickly.
Industry perspective
At the bill’s first committee hearing Monday, a number of agricultural equipment dealers testified against the bill, saying it is unnecessary and that there are ulterior motives behind it.
“John Deere, and I believe most manufacturers, already supply an abundance of tools for customers to diagnose, repair what they own. John Deere and 21st Century Equipment believe that our customers own their equipment and already have the right to repair them,” said Russell Ball, territory sales manager of 21st Century Equipment, LLC.
Ball insists that John Deere gives equipment owners access to every diagnostic manual that is made available to dealers, and that some repairs could be made without ever needing to send a technician out to a farm. Beyond that, he says the bill goes beyond the normal scope of repairs.
“The bill would give access to manufacturers' intellectual property and would allow the reprogramming of controllers, which can lead to illegal tampering. This could involve resetting of engine horsepower, speed limits and defeating emissions control systems,” Ball said.
The Colorado Farm Bureau is in a monitor position on the bill, but said the MOU is an example of private industry creating solutions to the problem on a national level. A spokesperson went on to say the CFB supports the right of owners to repair their own equipment, but they have concerns with the legislation and allowing full access to security codes and passwords.
The bill passed out of its first committee hearing Monday, with all Democrats voting for it and all Republicans voting against it. Weinberg, a Republican, is a prime sponsor of the bill.
If the legislature passes this bill, Colorado would be the first state in the nation with a right to repair agricultural equipment law on the books.
