John Deere recently announced the availability of Pro Service Upgrade to Operations Center and it replaces the existing Customer Service Advisor. The new capability requires an annual license of $ 195 per machine and places the ability of software reprogramming of Deere controllers directly in the hands of the customer.
This is an important new capability and potentially an inflection point in the right to repair debate which has been happening for many years within the agriculture equipment space.
Before we dig into the details, let us look at the changing landscape and explore how right to repair is not only a business and technology issue, but also a cultural issue.
A changing landscape
The farmer had a dreamy look on his face as he looked at his bank of four sweet potato harvesters, stacked in front of a wall of empty sweet potato bins.
This sweet potato farmer in Merced county, California had spent the last 20 minutes explaining to me how the harvester worked today. Along the way, he had regaled me with stories of how he made one or the other modifications to change its behavior to suit his needs, fixed an issue himself or in collaboration with his neighbor or a local machine shop. According to him, the harvester looked quite a bit different now, compared to how it was when he first got it almost 35-40 years ago!
This story has been fairly common on farms in the United States. It has become less common over the last few years, as farm equipment has become more and more sophisticated. Today’s farm equipment has a ton of sensors, cameras, and electronics.
For example, a Carbon Robotics G2-1200 with 16 modules has 48 high resolution cameras, 320 high intensity LED bedtop lights, 100+ AI deep learning crop models, and probably 32 NVIDIA GPUs (this is a guess on my part - a single A100 GPU costs about $ 15K, whereas a H100 GPU costs about $ 25K)
It is becoming harder and harder for farmers to repair their own equipment, as they might not have access to the right data, information, tools or expertise.
OEM terms of use and warranties make it difficult for a farmer to fix certain issues without going to the dealership, which can be time consuming and expensive. OEMs love this as it is an additional source of ongoing revenue for them.
AgTech Alchemy is hosting an event in Chicago called “The Soy-Bean” on August 14th. There is a webinar on “AI Ready Data for Earth Observation” organized by Earth Daily on August 26, 2025 featuring Sachi Desai and I.
It is a cultural issue first
The Right to Repair debate in agriculture is not just a battle over software and access to diagnostic data. It is a conflict deeply rooted in the cultural identity of the American farmer. It is related to the technological transformation of the farm.
Self-sufficiency was and is a hallmark of farming life. The ability to fix one's own equipment was not just a practical necessity but a point of pride. This long standing cultural strain is now in conflict with an age of digitally driven agriculture. Farm equipment are now sophisticated computers on wheels.
These machines rely heavily on a network of sensors, on-board computers (known as Engine Control Units or ECUs), and millions of lines of proprietary software code (firmware) to operate. This software controls not only advanced precision agriculture functions like GPS guidance and variable rate application but also core operational systems, including engine performance, transmission shifting, and emissions controls.