As we collectively maintain cognitive dissonance while hoping someone solves climate change, are farmers paying the price for our love of high fructose corn syrup and cheezburgers? 🍔🥤 Extreme heat waves in the northern hemisphere summer have zapped water supplies, resulting in drought-stricken US farmers selling cows and killing crops. But that’s not the only thing curdling their milk. 

Following in Greta Thunberg’s footsteps, farmers have been raising placards and lawsuits to fight for their right to repair tractors, and in the US they’re Deere hunting using the Clean Air Act as ammunition. 🔫 The right to repair is the kind of law change, supported by Biden, that means consumers have the right to fix their gadgets (and cracked screens) at home… or their hella spensy tractors across 2.01 million farms in the US. That’s without manufacturers using software lockouts, expensive servicing or warranty voids, so consumers flood landfill with fixable stuff.

Last week an Aussie battler waded into the ‘liberate the tractors’ clash by mowing down demons while mowing crops. 🌾 By using jailbreaking hacks, Sick Codes played Doom on a John Deere tractor after bypassing the software’s digital locks. But this wasn’t just a game. Mr Codes and others reckon malicious hackers could exploit vulnerable Linux and Windows CE hardware, as happened with the meaty JBS ransomware attack, imploding the world’s food supply network. 

Will the US’ largest private farm owner potato farmer Bill Gates join in the fight? 🥔 Each US Deere (DE) dealership services around 12,018 US farms over 5.3 million acres of land, and that’s a mighty holding-up-traffic drive for farmers who seek repairs. Yet while the angry placard waving hasn't spelled doom for Deere, they hit the dirt with analysts’ earnings expectations last week, even lowering their net income forecasts by US$200 million. A sign farmers could be dusting off the old John Deere B?