[nullsocket]

These companies are also actively pushing "Renting" as a business model where the farmer only rents the tractor for the season. Any maintenance and repairs are done as part of the rental and at the end of the season, the tractor goes back. This completely cuts the farmer out of the equation in terms of ownership/repair.

[raw_creations]

Rent or buy, the issue is that if a harvester breaks down in the field it could be 3 ~4 days before a technician gets to the field, diagnoses and has to order a part, wait for said part and come back to your field to replace it. That machine being down for two weeks during harvest could mean the farmer losing a whole lot of money.

[4043D]

If you are someplace like rural Australia the closest tech might be 1000km away.. if they haven't installed the hacked firmware they can't even service them without a tech or the tractor shuts down.