The feds are coming for John Deere over the right to repair

I'm not and do not know American farmer so I'm asking a genuine question, why did they keep buying Deere tractors ?

I know for a fact that there are competitors, in Europe we have many other brand of tractors. It would make no sense to buy something that you know you can't repair.

As sibling comments have said, wide availability of parts and specialists is a big part of it. Big time ops can have people on staff, but most mom and pops will lean on the service shops. Either way though, you need to have parts physically nearby so you can be back up and running in hours rather than days. When your hay is down and rain is in the forecast, waiting days instead of hours can be the difference between a great harvest and a field full of ass grass. In the north american west, when your irrigation is broken and it's July/August, you may only have a day or two before crops start drying and wilting. If you're lucky, you'll get it back up before permanent damage starts.

In many rural areas, John Deere is the closest and/or only option, so you have to choose between freedom and inconvenience, or technological slavery and safety. As we've seen with the general public, most people will go with the latter. Your insurance premiums are certainly cheaper that way.

I guess I don't really understand this argument in an age of near-overnight shipping. I am not a farmer, but I have maintained EOL equipment like refrigerators, fancy stoves, a MB 240D, chainsaws in a small mountain town (ie, far from parts sources). I tend to have the next obvious replacement parts on the shelf already. So for instance I have brake pads for a 2001 Toyota Tundra on the shelf.

Though I am not a farmer I have spent time with the spouse's family out in W Minnesota and all of them were farmers. I did not get the impression that they were useless around a wrench, welding rig, or electrical circuits.

An argument I could buy about Deere's brand loyalty is that (I know nothing about this beyond farmer hearsay) the current generation of farmers seems to really like the GPS automation. Grandpa can go a lot more years these days, is the point. I'd be curious about the accuracy of that anecdata.