A new tractor often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but not included in that price: the right to repair it. That has put farmers on the front lines of a battle pitting consumers against the ...

For more than a few years now, we’ve been covering the saga of tractors from the larger manufacturers on which all components are locked down by software to the extent that they can only be replaced ...

For the mechanically minded operator, it’s often possible to carry out minor repairs in the farm workshop. But with tractors getting ever more complex, there’s an increasing number of jobs that ...

Owning a $500,000 tractor doesn’t mean you can fix it. Welcome to John Deere’s digital nightmare, where farmers resort to Ukrainian hackers just to repair equipment they legally own. This isn’t ...

From his tractor dealership in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, Kyle Smith, owner of Midway Farm Equipment, dispatches his mechanics miles away to fix farmers' tractors — repairs requiring much more than a ...

Last summer, Walter Schweitzer had set out to bale his field of dry hay, and was moving quickly to beat the rain when his tractor broke down. The Montana farmer couldn’t figure out what had ...

Tractors are a major expenditure on the farm, and breakdowns can leave you with a big mechanic’s bill. There are some ways, however, that you can try to avoid costly breakdowns by keeping your machine ...

Jake Lieb stands by his John Deere planter March 18 on his farm near Monticello, Ill. Deere signed a memorandum of understanding last year that should help farmers like Lieb and independent repair ...