{"id":6422,"date":"2020-01-07T13:33:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/?p=6422"},"modified":"2020-01-07T13:33:50","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:33:50","slug":"for-tech-weary-midwest-farmers-40-year-old-tractors-now-a-hot-commodity-slashdot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2020\/01\/07\/for-tech-weary-midwest-farmers-40-year-old-tractors-now-a-hot-commodity-slashdot\/","title":{"rendered":"For Tech-Weary Midwest Farmers, 40-Year-Old Tractors Now a Hot Commodity – Slashdot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Midwest Farmers, 40-Year-Old Tractors Now a Hot Commodity<\/a><\/h1>\n

More and more people now recognize that the right to repair is paramount for resilience.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n

For Tech-Weary Midwest Farmers, 40-Year-Old Tractors Now a Hot Commodity<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
from the growing-trends dept.<\/div>\n
An anonymous reader quotes a report from StarTribune: Kris<\/i>
\nFolland grows corn, wheat and soybeans and raises cattle on 2,000 acres<\/i>
\nnear Halma in the northwest corner of Minnesota, so his operation is<\/i>
\nfar from small. But when he last bought a new tractor, he opted for an<\/i>
\nold one — a 1979 John Deere 4440. He retrofitted it with automatic<\/i>
\nsteering guided by satellite, and he and his kids can use the tractor to<\/i>
\nfeed cows, plant fields and run a grain auger. The best thing? The<\/i>
\ntractor cost $18,000, compared to upward of $150,000 for a new tractor.<\/i>
\nAnd Folland doesn’t need a computer to repair it.<\/i><\/p>\n

Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s <\/i>are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days<\/a><\/i>
\n— and it’s not because they’re antiques. Cost-conscious farmers are<\/i>
\nlooking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and<\/i>
\ntotally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as<\/i>
\nmore recent models that run on sophisticated software. “It’s a trend<\/i>
\nthat’s been building. It’s been interesting in the last couple years,<\/i>
\nwhich have been difficult for ag, to see the trend accelerate,” said<\/i>
\nGreg Peterson, the founder of Machinery Pete, a farm equipment data<\/i>
\ncompany in Rochester. […] There are some good things about the<\/i>
\nsoftware in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning<\/i>
\nif something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time<\/i>
\nto nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer<\/i>
\nis powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the<\/i>
\ndealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for<\/i>
\nlabor.<\/i><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Midwest Farmers, 40-Year-Old Tractors Now a Hot Commodity More and more people now recognize that the right to repair is paramount for resilience.<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[171,259,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-ethics","category-right-to-repair","category-senza-categoria","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6daft-1FA","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14505,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2025\/12\/23\/a-little-too-much-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6422,"position":0},"title":"A little too much","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2025-12-23","format":false,"excerpt":"Once upon a time, when I was an young and naive Amiga user I used to mock Windows entusiast for their sheer waste of resources: it needed a whopping 4 megabytes of memory! 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