LOCAL COLUMN
OPINION: Let NM farmers fix their own equipment
If you farm or ranch in New Mexico, you already know what a broken tractor costs. It isn't just the repair bill. It's the day you lose, and during planting or harvest, a lost day turns into a lost crop.
That's why a recent agreement between the Federal Trade Commission and John Deere is worth paying attention to out here.
Under the terms, farmers and independent repair shops get access to the same diagnostic and repair tools Deere provides its authorized dealers, and that access holds for the next 10 years. It's a real change from where things stood, and farmers have been asking for it for a long time.
It's worth more in New Mexico than in most places because of how far apart everything is here. A producer in the Estancia Valley or out past Portales can be a 100 miles from the nearest dealer. When something goes down, that's two hours each way before anyone has even looked at the machine. Meanwhile the water's running or the field's ready for harvest.
When you add in the cost of a service call, a simple sensor problem can turn into an unplanned expense that eats into a season's already thin margins. Multiply that across a state where agriculture supports thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity, and you start to understand just how greatly the cumulative cost of downtime starts to affect our state.
None of this means dealers are the problem. Plenty of repairs need a trained technician and a real shop, and dealers will keep doing that work. The point is narrower. If you own the machine and you know how to fix it, you shouldn't be locked out of it by software. And you shouldn't have to move it across the state to find out whether the fix takes 10 minutes or 10 hours.
Better diagnostic access helps the independent shops in our small towns too. More of them can take the work, which means more competition on price and more of that money staying in the community instead of leaving it. It also means a shop can build up real expertise on a piece of equipment instead of turning customers away for lack of the right software license.
Farming in New Mexico is hard enough. Drought, input costs, labor, markets that move without warning. Getting your own equipment running again shouldn't be one more thing stacked on top.
Most producers I've talked to aren't asking anyone to solve their problems for them. They're asking for the tools to solve more of those problems themselves. This agreement with one company gives them some of that. Other companies should be willing to similarly collaborate with the FTC so the right to repair becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Rep. Joshua N. Hernandez, R-Rio Rancho, represents District 60 in the New Mexico House of Representatives, where he serves on its Economic & Rural Development Committee.
