Opinion: Farmers are fighting for our rights to repair our iPhones

The average Tesla-driving, iPhone-using suburbanite isn’t spending a lot of time worrying about tractor software payloads. They should, though.

Fixing a broken-down farm tractor used to take just a wrench set and some elbow grease. Now repairs might require a mobile-device interface, online diagnostic tools and secure software updates, too. And that stuff isn’t just sitting around in the barn. It’s mostly held at a shrinking number of manufacturer-authorized dealerships. As a result, simple breakdowns that in the past might have been repaired in hours can now take days or weeks. During busy times, such as spring planting, long delays can harm a farm’s crops and profitability.

This spring, at

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