John Deere and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will give its US customers the ‘right to repair‘ their own equipment.
Previously, farmers were only permitted to use authorised parts and service facilities rather than independent repair options for their equipment from the agricultural machinery manufacturer.
President of AFBF, Zippy Duvall, has said that the agreement follows years of work and campaigning by AFBF.
“This is an issue that has been a priority for us for several years and has taken a lot of work to get to this point,” he said.
“And as you use equipment, we all know at some point in time, there’s going to be problems with it.
“And we did have problems with having the opportunity to repair our equipment where we wanted to, or even repair it on the farm,” he added.
“It ensures that our farmers can repair their equipment and have access to the diagnostic tools and product guides so that they can find the problems and find solutions for them.
“And this is the beginning of a process that we think is going to be real healthy for our famers and for the company because what it does is it sets up an opportunity for our farmers to really work with John Deere on a personal basis.”
David Gilmore of John Deere has said the MOU will help farmers get their equipment and machinery back up and running as soon as possible following a breakdown.
“It’s vitally important that we have an opportunity for American Farm Bureau Federation and industry to come together to solve issues and opportunities that we have,” he said.
“Machinery and equipment and the products that our customers invest in are a large investment.
“And the opportunity for them to maximize the uptime of that equipment and minimize downtime is an important area of focus for our organization and for the industry.”