You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy: Why It's So Hard to Break John Deere's Control Over Farming
BIG by Matt Stoller
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You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy: Why It's So Hard to Break John Deere's Control Over Farming<br>It's not hard to help America's farmers escape from John Deere's monopoly. But actually breaking the firm's inefficient control over equipment would cut against our strategy of Number Go Up.<br>Matt Stoller<br>Jul 10, 2026
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In the final days of the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission filed a flurry of cases, including one against farm equipment giant John Deere. A number of states - Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Arizona - joined the commission in the complaint. The allegations were that Deere, a monopolist in large combines and tractors, prohibited independent repair shops and farmers from fixing their own equipment, forcing them to go to official John Deere dealers for expensive repairs.<br>For a frame of reference, hourly rates for a Deere dealer in 2023 were between $130-200, and more if the repair was in the field. One might ask how a company prevents farmers from fixing mechanical machines like tractors? Well, most machines these days are computerized. In the case of John Deere combines and tractors, multiple functions are no longer purely mechanical, but run under the control of electronic control units (ECUs), which are embedded computers.<br>Digitizing farm equipment offers new features, but it also creates new chokepoints for John Deere, including restrictions on how the machines can be fixed or modified. The scheme is simple. Deere has designed its equipment so that fixing them requires electronic repair tools to identify, diagnose, test, calibrate, update and reprogram ECUs. Deere-authorized dealers get a full version that enables a repair of everything, whereas independents don’t. And so, to repair equipment, farmers often have to go to an overpriced Deere dealer, or hack their own machinery with illicit Ukrainian software.
Large tractors and combines are massively expensive, costing in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. They last for decades, and it’s difficult to switch from one brand to another. Farmers have traditionally loved John Deere, which makes good equipment in the U.S. Increasingly, however, farmers are frustrated; John Deere has been offshoring production, and exploiting its customers. The used tractor market is now booming, in part because it includes a host of machines whose repair situation John Deere can’t control.<br>The FTC’s case was that Deere, already a monopolist in the sale of large tractors and combines, controls 100% of the market for aftermarket repairs for John Deere branded farm equipment. And its restrictions in that area were designed to maintain its control of those repairs. The two victimized groups were farmers, who bore the brunt of higher costs charged by Deere for parts and repairs, and independent repair shops, who were disadvantaged versus Deere-controlled shops.<br>Such restrictions on our “right-to-repair” equipment are rife in the economy, exploited by everyone from Apple and electronics producers to defense contractors to wheelchair makers. It’s a huge deal in corporate America; Ford CEO Jim Farley recently claimed that if drivers get the ability to fix their own cars, people will die. The reason for this paranoia in the C-suite is because a key plank of American economic policy since the early 1980s were strong patent, copyright, and trademark rules.<br>Prior to the 1980s, American companies built things domestically, because they risked losing control of the technology if they built things abroad using contractors. But when we tightened IP rules, and embedded those in global trade agreements, it became possible for say, Apple to make its products in China using someone else’s capital while maintaining strict control and high profit margins. And on the consumer side, as more and more things were embedded with digital technology, corporations could lock down and control the user experience. A “capital light” model of production, and an extractive monopolistic sales and repair strategy, are key parts of the Number Go Up rule, in which America prioritizes only economic activity that supports higher equity prices.<br>Enshittification of the internet and digital tools in general was one result. Indeed, the coiner of that term, Cory Doctorow, often points to Section 1201 of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, as foundational to the rise of the bad platforms on which we find ourselves imprisoned. This law makes it a crime to bypass technological measures used to maintain copyright protections. A different and related phenomenon, the increasing locking out of Americans from their own property, is another result. The phrase, "You'll own nothing and be happy,” became an iconic way to understand the transformation of property rights.<br>This John Deere suit was the centerpiece of...