"Don't buy their stuff" is exactly the right answer. You need to do your research before you buy big ticket items. It may not be true in every sector, but Deere has plenty of competition.
If you're low income, work 2 jobs, single parent, get home at 23:00 broken tired, want a meal but your fridge just broke down and everything is spoiled inside, you don't spend 2 more hours doing reasearch. You clean it, go to bed hungry, call repair in the morning (optional, if your hopes are high), and when they tell you it's not repairable, you get the first new fridge you can afford in a 10 min online search while on the bus/train/tram being late to work.
Reasearch, self-repair, is for wealthy people.
A tractor can be almost a million dollar item now, and nobody spending a million dollars should be doing so without doing some research.
That's like saying you don't bother learning what illnesses your animals or crops may contract, and how to prevent/cure them, because you're not wealthy. Buying a book and reading it, to the improve your abilities, is time well spent.
Most maintenance on a tractor is not major, and require basic skill and parts. It's the companies that don't want this, they want specialized technicians to come out to replace an oil filter.
I have a 30 year old vacuum cleaner, which I continue to maintain, which mostly amounts to stripping it once every 10 years and cleaning out all the filters that caked up with fine dust. Definitely cheaper to strip it myself one evening, than to pay someone to do it, or purchase a new one. It is like an hour of work for years of service.
There's a certain type of customer that wants the dealer to handle parts and repair. But those guys aren't the lawn mower segment.
Citation needed
[0]: https://www.agri-pulse.com/ext/resources/pdfs/gov.uscourts.i...