EPA Advances Farmers' Right to Repair
epa.gov177 points by bilsbie 16 hours ago
177 points by bilsbie 16 hours ago
Seems good but unlikely to accomplish anything. Manufacturers obviously don't want to make third-party repairs easier because they think they'll lose money, so if the EPA says one excuse isn't valid anymore they'll just find another one. This new guidance doesn't ask or even suggest that manufacturers actually do anything, it just says "hey if you want to help your customers repair stuff, we'd be ok with it".
As long as the manufacturer isn't on the hook for a violation of the EPA when the owner modifies their vehicle to be out of spec.
For automobiles, this has been the case - that the owner is responsible the vehicle goes out of spec... and the owner can also do a lot of customization of their vehicle.
For heavy machinery (which tractors fall into), the manufacture is almost always on the hook for any modification that the owner makes.
https://www.farm-equipment.com/articles/18110-what-you-need-...
> Here’s one real-life scenario that Natalie Higgins, vice president of government relations and general counsel for EDA, shared during a recent presentation for the United Equipment Dealers Assn. “An Ohio equipment owner purchased a tractor and then installed a turbocharger on the engine. The tractor owner sustained injuries and then sued both the manufacturer and the equipment dealer, alleging that his injuries were the result of negligence on the part of the manufacturer and dealer. Remember, neither the dealer nor the manufacturer were involved in the turbochargers installation.”
> ...
> And, if you service equipment that has been chipped, the warranty will most likely be denied and you will not be paid for your work. “That can also put your dealership in a sticky situation if technicians in the shop are not conveying to the rest of the dealership what is going in,” says Wareham. F
> Financial consequences can be harsh for not following the law. Under federal law 40 CFR § 89.1006, the penalty for a dealer who removes or renders inoperative emissions controls is subject to a penalty of $32,500 for each violation. Wareham says that one manufacturer of chipping software was initially fined $300,000 by the EPA and then $6 million to ensure future compliance with the Clean Air Act. “The EPA has stated that their intent is to crack down on defeat devices in 2020,” says Wareham.
> A dealer may face liability issues when customers tamper with the equipment they purchased, even if a dealer had nothing to do with the modification. For example, in instances in Ohio and Oregon, customers were injured as a result of modifications and dealers were sued.
But did the tractor owner win the lawsuit? Anybody can sue anybody. Winning is what matters. That anecdote doesn't tell me anything, and the whole article reads as FUD. I wonder if it is paid for by John Deere?
Not 100% sure about that one - though even that they were sued is an issue.
Note that part of this is also that worker's comp excludes farm labor. So you can't get compensated through workers comp.
https://nationalaglawcenter.org/workers-compensation-for-agr...
> Whether or not someone is eligible for workers’ compensation depends on their state and the industry they work in. There are no requirements at the federal level that mandate states to have workers’ compensation laws. Nevertheless, every state, except for Texas, requires most employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. However, the majority of state workers’ compensation laws specifically exclude or limit agricultural employers from the workers’ compensation requirement.
Product Liability in the Farm Equipment Industry - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY
Take note of 42:23 where it goes to who is at fault and the liability for it (the case study starts at 21:21 - jumping to 42:23 you can get the "who is paying for it" in two minutes). The entire video is interesting (if you're interested in product liability for industrial (farm) equipment ... but I can understand someone not wanting to watch an hour long video about it). It boils down to "every piece of farm equipment is dangerous from the insurance perspective and a manufacture allowing unapproved modifications to the equipment is still at fault, even if the modification was made by another party."
>But did the tractor owner win the lawsuit? Anybody can sue anybody.
Yes, but this requires the accused to pay for legal counsel and go through an expensive trial.
Maybe the US should fix this.
It is 100% FUD, as evidenced by the fact they were afraid to link the actual case.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ohnd-1_12-cv-01...
I can see why that regulation would be in place though. I don't want heavy industrial machinery coming with "here's how to make it run faster and stronger but ruin the environment, which you definitely should not do wink wink."
It's a reasonable goal, but I think that one can find better ways to meet that goal than making manufacturers responsible for what the owner of the equipment does with it. That method is just insanely unfair to the manufacturer.
Can you point to a single case where a manufacturer was held responsible for what the owner of the equipment did with it?
It'll be hard to do because it's like the more restrictive gun laws. It'll never stick so they never take it though court, but they threaten it to get the conduct they want. OEMs have spent huge sums locking down computer systems "because emissions".
The EPA has a ton of ways to expensively scrutinize (heavy on the "screw") oems at their discretion so it doesn't really need to be a serious threat, just a warning.
Same dynamic as local business vs local code enforcers basically.
The CAA allows parties with no standing to sue, to magically have standing to sue, and then have their victims pay lawyers fees (or otherwise go to jail[0]). So there's no need for the EPA to get involved. You can just be sued by, say " Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment" and end up paying unlimited lawyers fees because some guy 300 miles away says you dropped a particle of carbon on them.
[0] https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2025/10/24/after-die...
> Here’s one real-life scenario that Natalie Higgins, vice president of government relations and general counsel for EDA, shared during a recent presentation for the United Equipment Dealers Assn. “An Ohio equipment owner purchased a tractor and then installed a turbocharger on the engine. The tractor owner sustained injuries and then sued both the manufacturer and the equipment dealer, alleging that his injuries were the result of negligence on the part of the manufacturer and dealer. Remember, neither the dealer nor the manufacturer were involved in the turbochargers installation.”
-----------------------
This is such a weasley disingenuous argument. First of all, it was a guy's insurance company that sued the tractor manufacturer and the supercharger manufacturer. The guy filed an insurance claim, the insurance company is just suing anyone they can possibly imagine to try to make the quarterly results better.
It was also dismissed under summary judgement because the case is ridiculous on it's face. This was not a case where restricting the right to modify things you own based on possible harm to a corporation was justified.
Quite the opposite, this is a case where a greedy insurance company made a really stupid hail-mary lawsuit to try and recover from a legitimate insurance claim.
The fact that we're repeating this blatant corporate propaganda is frankly embarrassing.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ohnd-1_12-cv-01...
The rest of that farm-equipment.com article is full of FUD as well - the kind that should be easily recognizable by technologists.
Exactly. My understanding is that the manufacturers interpreted the clean air rules as conveniently requiring them to use digital restrictions management (explicit or even just tacit) to prevent tampering (aka repairing) your own equipment. Low-emissions diesel engines then get hated on for the "EPA requirements", with the immediate bad actor corporations sidestepping blame (as usual). Removing the initial motivation / excuse isn't going to get rid of those digital restrictions, openly document the systems, nor provide the tools required to work on them.
The way this is framed, it doesn't even sound like the goal is to affect this dynamic at all. Rather it's to create a loophole of "temporarily" bypassing emission systems, such that if you delete and get caught you can just pinky swear that it's temporary for a repair that you're about to complete real soon. So the only real goal seems to be implicitly rolling back emissions enforcement across the board.
Actual right to repair action would focus on making it so individuals are able to self-repair the emissions control systems to function as designed. So this really just seems like yet another instance of a lofty idea being abused as cover for the destructionist agenda.
It is not just hate because of EPA requirements. These engines are more complicated and prone to failure. Small time operations can not afford the expensive repairs combined with loss of income during repair downtime.
As a result, only corporations remain or the few remaining owner operators avoid any engine newer than the year ~2000. These older vehicles also have the added benefit of having minimal electronics, sensors, and ECMs.
The "more prone to failure" seems to be driven by some abjectly terrible implementations (eg the notorious Kubota B3350). And it's certainly understandable that someone who knows how to repair things based on mechanical linkages would rebel against digital electronics.
But we're on a technology website. We shouldn't really be scared by a extra sensors, a CAN bus, and an embedded controller - assuming all of these things are openly documented and usable with freedom-preserving systems. In fact we should welcome them, as extra telemetry can help avoid downtime and effect repairs.
I think regardless of implementation, if the added complexity reduces reliability and introduces forced failure modes it's reasonable for people to avoid these systems altogether. For example, EGRs causing fouling or DEF engine throttling.
This may be true for our group, but I know numerous blue collar workers at the poverty line struggling due to these systems. Corporations / manufacturers have no incentive to make these systems more accessible. Even if they did, more complex -> more expensive to repair.
> And it's certainly understandable that someone who knows how to repair things based on mechanical linkages would rebel against digital electronics.
They're pretty right to be incensed that something that used to take one skill set now takes two.
>. We shouldn't really be scared by a extra sensors, a CAN bus, and an embedded controller - assuming all of these things are openly documented and usable with freedom-preserving systems
At what cost? For what benefit to the user?
>. In fact we should welcome them, as extra telemetry can help avoid downtime and effect repairs.
Oh, great, so the someone at the OEM can decide my model correlates with a higher $$ use and jack up parts cost. I don't trust you not to do this and I don't even own a tractor. Someone in middle america who's been on the receiving end of the raw deal that the "educated" classes have been peddling for the past 40yr has even less reason to allow your telemetry.
This kind of do nothingism come up any time something will happen, perfect is the enemy of done.
I am not opposed to this (that's why I said "this seems good"), just wanted to point out that I don't believe their claim that "Today’s action will not only expand consumer choice and provide opportunities for farmers but also encourage the use of newer farm equipment". I do think this won't accomplish anything but that doesn't mean I think they shouldn't have done it.
This, as others have noted is not a right to repair, it's a right to pollute.
There's a push for agricultural right to repair.[1] That falls under the Federal Trade Commission, not the Environmental Protection Administration. That's about parts and tool availability for the whole machine, not just the Diesel power train. This new announcement has zero effect on that.
Here are the controls of a modern John Deere combine.[2] Very little of that has anything to do with engine control. It's being able to fix that, and all the sensors and actuators connected to it, that's important. Diesels are rather reliable by now.
[1] https://nationalaglawcenter.org/ftc-files-suit-against-john-...
[2] https://www.deere.com.au/assets/images/region-4/products/har...
One of the weird things is the way manufacturers used emissions regulation as an excuse to lock their engines down.
Older engines had no computers. But computer control allows things that are needed to meet emissions like variable valve timing and whatnot. Also, engines are supposed to detect faults in emissions control systems and throw an error code.
So they brought in ECUs, but they DRMed them. Now they said it's so people can't tamper with emissions, but they DRMed everything to the point where now you have to take it to the dealer for servicing.
Do they need DRM to prevent people from tampering with emissions? No, they could have ringfenced it like some devices with radio transmitters do. Does DRM in the ECU prevent people tampering with emissions controls? Also no. There are people doing EGR deletes and whatnot on Tier 4 engines all the time.
But they were able to use emissions as the wedge to do what they really wanted to do: make their equipment not third-party serviceable.
By the way I think this also is a microcosm of the failure of the liberal order. The government should have cracked down hard on manufacturers doing this to begin with. The fact that they allowed manufacturers to turn their customers into serfs "in the name of emissions" obviously just ended up discrediting emissions control.
even when they do something nominally good, they gotta send it through the Propagandaministerium apparatus to glue on all the party-approved buzz words and various other bits and bobs so it reads like your grandma's facebook wall.
Right to repair is such a wild departure from their usual. It doesn't fit with grifting personal wealth, diverting tax income to billionaires, privatizing services, executing protestors, or similar activities. Makes me wonder what fucked-up horror is hidden behind this.
Politically, trying to exempt farm equipment from the clean air act to try to bias the rural vote to a more republican side of the ballot.
It allows farmers to roll coal if they say it's needed for a repair. So environmental destruction is the angle here.
TRACTOR PULLS: It's Not What You Think - Smarter Every Day 276 : https://youtu.be/VZ6_8WJ3mh8
The party that is against everything and for nothing needs a "win" to campaign on for their rural voters. Throw JD under the bus at home and hope the weakening dollar makes up for it increased exports.
If the companies could sue you because you went to another store and bought something cheaper, they would, for sure
How can the alignment of Right to Repair and Republicans not be obvious?
The self-made John Galt who "makes do" without government assistance by repairing all of his things himself, especially his old American muscle car that "they don't make like they used to anymore" is a fantasy that resonates so strongly with the right wing that the FBI might as well just use it to screen for domestic terrorists.
Republicans stopped being libertarian when they started supporting Trump.
Republicans were a coalition of anticommunists. This resulted in neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, and libertarians coming together. When the Soviet Union fell the coalition started to fall apart leading to fewer libertarians supporting the Republican party since the threat was less. The neoconservatives and paleoconservatives remained in the Republican party.
Republicans were never libertarian in any meaningful sense. There's a reason libertarians have their own party.
The reasons libertarians have their own party is so they can be blamed for in effect voting for Trump when they did not vote for Trump. It is a form of self-flagellation to ensure no matter which sides when, it is your fault to the other side.
My grandmother’s Facebook wall would probably be pretty reasonable if she had one.
She’s actually pretty cogent for 90 years old.
She does watch too much CNN though, winds her up a fair bit. Though at that age, your world tends to shrink so at least it gives her something to do.
For all the things you can say about this administration's EPA, this is a great thing.
You don't have to read this comment, I'm just throwing down a marker for myself.
I think this is a good policy direction. I don't like the rhetoric and I understand that this as much a political decision as anything else, but I'm glad to see it regardless. A year from now if someone says "you reflexively oppose anything Trump's administration does," I'll have this to look back on.
(Shoes at TSA checkpoints too, btw.)
If I'm reading this correctly, it's basically saying "the manufacturers interpretation of the Clean Air Act is wrong" and that's it? How does this move the needle on right to repair at all? Maybe it'll require some work on the manufacturers part to come up with a new excuse but that's it.
OCTOBER 03, 2024 - https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...
> Boston, MA – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Deere & Company (John Deere) accusing the company of undermining its own “right-to-repair” agreements and evading its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act by failing to grant its customers the right to repair their own agricultural equipment.
AUGUST 16, 2023 - The EPA finally refutes John Deere, dealership arguments against Right to Repair https://pirg.org/articles/the-epa-finally-refutes-john-deere...
> On August 4, after prodding for more than a year by PIRG and our allies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent an on-the-record letter to the National Farmers Union in support of Right to Repair. The letter clearly refutes manufacturers’ and dealers’ accusations that repair access facilitates emissions tampering and therefore violates environmental laws.
----
Note that this started in the previous administration and the EPA was chastising John Deer three years ago on this issue.
> ...they are finally getting the regulatory relief to break free from burdensome Green New Scam rules and...
One of the worst Trump-isms that will out-live him is how normalized name-calling has become, even in US agency press briefings. Just childish and shameful.
Well, what's nice is that no matter the words Trump can call something or someone, the words that can be accurately used to describe him are far worse. Words like pedophile, (convicted) rapist, (convicted) fraudster, criminal, puppet, the list goes on.
People will remember him for different things, and what they will remember about him will say more about them than him.
After reading over the EPA letter[0], I can't help but wonder whether the final paragraph gives a "bad faith out" to John Deere and their ilk. You could disingenuously interpret the "increment of time necessary to effectuate the repair" to mean the time it would take an official John Deere service technician with a full suite of tools to make the repair.
The following sentence admittedly muddies it a bit, but in general the suggestion that John Deere can still be the arbiter for when the machine can / cannot run without the environmental system in the loop seems like a significantly less meaningful change than what is described on the EPA.gov website.
[0] https://dis.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=64859&fla... -- It's only 3 pages, very quick read
I mean this failed with the automotive industry. Many different strong laws were passed over the decades to ensure that anyone could repair their car, you can't refuse to sell them parts, you can't sue them for aftermarket, etc. etc.
The end result? You can't do anything to a modern car without going to a manufacturer and using their locked-in ecosystem entirely. They have been caught doing every trick they were told not to do and they get away with it.
Ultimately in this case it's a courts problem and not a law problem. The only place where law might be the issue would be in limiting damages for the companies in question.
It's simply easier for them to take all the extra profit they're getting and deflect lawsuits. From an American standpoint, that means the manufacturers are getting too much out of the deal and the only way to fix that is to make the lawsuits more painful. Because it's not like it's manufacturers vs. the public - it's really the manufacturers vs. third-party repairers AND the public.
For what it's worth, generally in the US you can still buy a limited time subscription to the manufacturer's own diagnostic software for a reasonable price, for example BMW ISTA is $32/day, VW ODIS is $130/week, and Ford FDRS is $50 / 2 days. This is enough to complete most module replacement or upgrade tasks for a hobbyist, and still cheaper than dealership labor costs.
There's also a standard for the dongles (which specifies a DLL export interface from a driver, amusingly) called J2534 so you don't need a separate hardware interface for each make, although to your point, the way the laws around J2534 were written was too lax and some manufacturers have realized that there is a loophole where only certain diagnostic tasks like module reflashing need to be possible over J2534.
Also worth noting that reverse engineered software has generally not been majorly threatened by manufacturers in the automotive space; Forscan for Ford, VCDS and OBD11 for VW, and so on are all quite popular.
Unfortunately "security" restrictions especially in the EU and the uprise of ADAS systems has made things a lot harder; most makes now have some online challenge/response cryptography (ie VW SFD) for diagnostics where previously they had offline login, and most ADAS and camera systems require extremely expensive calibration jigs (this is a valid technical problem, but with no incentive to reduce cost or make these systems accessible, they end up being comically expensive).
Anyway the situation in automotive is way better than the situation in equipment and ag, so I don't think it's entirely fair to say that regulation was a complete failure.
Why EPA and not FTC?
> The Clean Air Act has long crushed family farmers across America – but under the Trump Administration, they are finally getting the regulatory relief to break free from burdensome Green New Scam rules and focus on the vital job of feeding, clothing, and fueling America and the world
Huh, interesting framing here. Did some clever Right to Repair advocate figure out that they could get pro-consumer action through by phrasing it as anti-Clean Air Act?
I'm not too hopeful for this shift surviving contact with John Deere's counter-advocacy though. Remember the flip-flopping on sending ICE after farmhands and hotel/casino staff? That ultimately seems have landed on the maximalist deport-them-all stance on account of Miller's proximity to Trump's ear. I doubt there's someone with personal stakes so close to power advocating for Right to Repair, so the lobbyists will likely win this.
> Huh, interesting framing here. Did some clever Right to Repair advocate figure out that they could get pro-consumer action through by phrasing it as anti-Clean Air Act?
At least one of the excuses used by car manufacturers to not reveal details/etc on their engines has been that "modification could cause it to fall outside of emissions specifications." I don't see why Deere et all wouldn't try the excuse.
Oh, I know it's an actual excuse they use. That's what opens up this rhetorical angle. It's just a paper-thin legal justification though, without the CAA they would just use another excuse. Removing or weakening the Act wouldn't help consumers and would harm the public. What actually needs to happen is the EPA issuing a statement like this and backing it up with legal teeth. I just wish I trusted this EPA to actually follow through on that.
This must explain why when I shopped for a tractor, 25hp was a cutoff where prices change significantly.
I own one with a 35hp engine detuned to 25hp to legally bypass emission regulation. Just a fuel regulator screw turned down and timings modified. The exact same tractor with the screw turned up is about 10% more expensive and has a DPF which decreases reliability. The uptuned model also has an ECU and is harder to repair, whereas non-emission model can be (is) almost purely mechanical.
I own one (a Kubota L3302) with a 33 HP engine, and there are a few guys around me who have 25 HP subcompacts (Kubota, Kioti, and JD) that do similar work to mine. It's astonishing how much everything around those 25hp tractors stinks of diesel. All the time. And how everything gets coated in a fine black greasy dust. I have very little of that.
I've read before that for the average homeowner, the particulate/NOx/CO emissions from their little 5 HP 4-stroke carbureted lawnmower and 40cc 2-stroke carbureted blower/stringtrimmer/etc are often greater than that of their 150 HP automobile - which has an ECU and oxygen sensors and fuel injectors and catalytic converters and so on.
The price bump to go up to the 33 HP engine with the emissions controls was significant (much more than the 8HP performance bump), and every 30 hours or so it wants to run a "regen" cycle which always seems to be at the worst possible moment in my workload, but I feel a lot less guilty about running it knowing that my exhaust isn't nearly as bad for the environment and for my lungs as it could be at a slightly lower performance tier.
I noticed this https://toolguyd.com/makita-xgt-motor-unit-launch/ and wonder if it's going to go anywhere - there are obvious advantages to "electric" but it's a hard sell to those already using existing equipment.
> has a DPF which decreases reliability
Also makes it so you don't have to avoid breathing the cloud of smoke when it starts up or grunts, nor get black shit caked all over your loader frame. Part of me wishes I bought >25hp for the emission system. Of course it's natural to always want more tractor than you have.
I keep waiting for the electric tractor. In the 25-30 hp class you can get reasonable runtime from a battery. Sure a Tesla can run for 4 hours on a full charge - but on the highway it is likely only using about 25 horsepower of fuel, it would run for much less time if continuously using all of the several hundred horsepower it can deliver on a track.
As a small land owner I don't think I could find a way to put 2 hours on my tractor in a day, so that I need to recharge overnight after 2 hours of use isn't even a loss. And not having to deal with diesel would be a big savings.
Depending on what is being done; it would seem like a 25-50hp electrical system with a little 5-10kw diesel generator would work great. You're almost never running these things at truly 100% duty cycle, so you just need a way to bank the power.
Edison Motors up in Canida is going this with OTR trucks for the logging industry.
For sure. I often think about this when using my tractor to clean up trees I've taken down, for which there is a lot of grab, lift, hop off, chainsaw, repeat. Or really any kind of hoisting/positioning where the engine is just sitting idle to occasionally move hydraulics.
Via HN a little while back, I came across a guy importing electric versions of things like front loaders, forklifts, excavators, etc. Intriguing, but less compelling if you have to buy 2-4 pieces of equipment rather than one jack-of-all-trades. Although if I were going to have to maintain multiple pieces of equipment, I'd definitely prefer them to be electric!
I can end up putting in more than 2 hours a day, but I think the math still works out for most homeowner use. I think the main thing it doesn't work out great for is long dirt-engaging operations like for actually farming a large field. But it's not like the subcompacts are really made for that either, and they're quite popular.
It would be really interesting to see what could be done with linear actuators instead of hydraulics, too. Although I suspect heat dissipation would be a problem, and working on hydraulics is pretty cool in and of itself.
> Huh, interesting framing here.
Hey, this might be a case of "enemy of my enemy is my friend." If the Right needs to use the "anti clean air" angle to convince their base, so that we can take a baby step towards a DRM-free future, I say let them.
Repeal intellectual property law. No more patents. No more owning concepts inherent to physics.
> Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advanced American farmers and equipment owners’ lawful right to repair their farm and other nonroad diesel equipment.
> This is another win for American farmers and ranchers by the Trump Administration. By clarifying manufacturers can no longer use the Clean Air Act to justify limiting access to repair tools or software, we are reaffirming the lawful right of American farmers and equipment owners to repair their farm equipment
This seems to be very specific to repairing diesel engines. I can imagine this is not the win for farmers that they're trying to make it sound like.
Every piece of heavy off-road equipment uses a diesel engine.
I think you’re not up to date on what a racket the big equipment manufacturers have going. If you want to replace an alternator… simple part, should be a 1 for 1 replacement done in 30min, you can’t do it because it requires a John Deer tech to program the computer. This is done so they can mandate you use their service people and their parts, or your warranty is void on a million dollar piece of equipment.
And the service techs can be backed up during harvest, so you miss your harvest and your crop dies on the vine. It’s ridiculous
I guess that’s what I was exactly thinking about I just didn’t know JD would use that very emissions control loophole. I’m imagining they behave like that for non diesel related parts too.
Doesn’t matter if it’s emissions control or not, they use these laws like a shield for their anti consumer, protectionist crap.
