They sell land prep, crop sowing, and harvesting solutions.
It's not like a car. These things are used for a few weeks a year, and if they don't do their job during that time the farm looses all their income for the year.
A better way to think of them is like construction equipment that you rent. Even big construction companies rent their equipment.
I'd want to see the numbers on exaclty how much supposed always-up farming equipment saves in crop production, compared to farmers that don't use it.
In fact, I know for certain that the most productive farmland in the US, per area unit, is least likely to use motorized equipment of any kind. And when they do it isn't equipment on par with John Deere.
Isn’t this exactly what you’d expect? Motorized equipment is for working vast amounts of farmland as efficiently as possible, so the only farmland that would be worked by hand would have to be much more lucrative in comparison.
That’s a funny way to phrase it considering that many farmers are landlords.
If you're renting a zillion acres to someone that grows corn or wheat on it, you're not a farmer, your a landlord; the renter is the farmer.
That's exactly why farmers push for right-to-repair. The old model of "each farmer can repair their tractor, or at least jury-rig it to work for a week" was much more scalable than John Deere somehow having enough staff and service partners to handle anything that goes wrong in those couple of weeks, and then having these people mostly idle the rest of the year.
Of course at the same time newer tractors are much more capable, and allow a farmer to be much more efficient. But for a country it's also somewhat risky to put a large part of their food supply behind a single point of failure
"On the last day of California's legislative session in 2000, Governor Gray Davis signed into law what had come to be known as "OBD-II." The new law expanded the OBD service information requirements in California by directing car companies to make all manuals and technical service bulletins Internet-accessible, supply tools, and offer training to all non-dealer service companies in the state."
http://fbaum.unc.edu/lobby/_107th/093_OBD_Service_Info/frame...
We need OBD regulations to be updated for reflect these new technologies. I think hydrogen vehicles are also exempt.
They are mainly exempt because most of that data is emissions related. ODB came about due to CA requiring lower emissions and smog checks. They needed a way to quickly and cheaply verify it independently of the manufacturer. Unfortunately, in VWs case, the law assumed the data isn't modified before being sent.
They are mostly a utility truck used quite often, and 2-3 times a year they hook up the expensive add-ons to do the big work