Cornhuskers Hunt Deere

Thinking about systems that come to serve themselves rather than their customers can uncover a lot of egregious examples. Here’s the latest assault on the family farmer by Big Ag:

Kyle Schwarting is a 36 year old farmer in Nebraska who likes to take care of things himself. He’s self-reliant and doesn’t take kindly to being told by equipment dealer Case that he can’t have access to a repair manual for his $250,000 tractor so he can fix it himself. “Gotta let us do it,” he’s told (for a price, of course).

“John Deere has gone as far as to claim that farmers don’t own the tractors they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for, but instead receive a “license to operate the vehicle”. They lock users into license agreements that forbid them from even looking at the software running the tractor or the signals it generates.”

So not only do farmers no longer own the seed to the crops they plant, thanks to Monsanto, they now no longer own the equipment they use to plant them. Another example of a system preying on its customers rather than serving them. Read the full article here