WHO REALLY OWNS A JOHN DEERE?

IS IT THE FARMER WHO PAYS $800,000 FOR A TRACTOR—OR THE COMPANY THAT WON’T LET THE FARMER GET UNDER THE HOOD?

- PETER WALDMAN AND LYDIA MULVANY

IT’S HUSKER HARVEST DAYS, Nebraska’s biggest agricultural trade show, and Kevin Kenney is working the pavilions. The engineer, inventor, and inveterate manure- stirrer is trying to be discreet. He has allies here among the sellers and auctioneers of used tractors and aftermarket parts. There are farmers, mechanics, and the odd politician or two who embrace him. But enemies lurk everywhere.

Kenney leads a grassroots campaign in the heart of the heartland to restore a fundamental right most people don’t realize they’ve lost—the right to repair their own farm equipment. By sheer dint of personal passion, he’s taking on John Deere and the other global equipment manufacturers in a bid to preserve mechanical skills on the American farm. Big Tractor says farmers have no right to access the copyrighted software that controls every facet of today’s equipment, even to repair their own machines. That’s the exclusive domain of authorized dealerships. Kenney says the software barriers create corporate monopolies—and destroy the agrarian ethos of resiliency and self-reliance.

“The spirit of the right to repair is the birthright we all share as a hot-rodding nation,” he says, channeling his inner Thomas Jefferson and Big Daddy Don Garlits. Tall and trim at 55, with gray-flecked hair and a passing resemblance to a corn-fed George Clooney, Kenney has kicked up significant pushback against the computerization of U.S. agriculture. His crusade to pass right-to-repair legislation in Nebraska has spread to proposals in 20 states. Last spring, Senator Elizabeth Warren, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for a national law “that empowers farmers to repair their equipment without going to an authorized agent.”