{"id":33953,"date":"2023-05-18T18:52:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T00:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-farmers-and-ranchers-havent-been-able-to-repair-their-own-equipment-until-now\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:14:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:14:52","slug":"colorado-farmers-and-ranchers-havent-been-able-to-repair-their-own-equipment-until-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-farmers-and-ranchers-havent-been-able-to-repair-their-own-equipment-until-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado farmers and ranchers haven\u2019t been able to repair their own equipment, until now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Farmer
Farmer Danny Wood, pictured here on Saturday, April 29, 2023, had to wait days for a technician to fix his tractor, which is just over a year old. Colorado's new right-to-repair law will make it easier for him to repair the vehicle himself. (Courtesy of KUNC)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A few miles from the Nebraska border on Colorado\u2019s Eastern Plains, Danny Wood\u2019s family has been growing wheat, corn and other grains for generations. Wood is a dryland farmer, which means he relies on rain to water his crops instead of irrigation, so planting has to be carefully timed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t get your crop planted, or you lose it in a hailstorm, it\u2019s just devastation because you don\u2019t go to work and get a paycheck. There went your paycheck,\u201d he said in an interview just before this year\u2019s planting season.<\/p>\n

Wood has over a million dollars worth of farm equipment like tractors, planters and combine harvesters to manage his 8,000 acres of crops. He bought his massive computerized red tractor just over a year ago. It is controlled by touch-screen monitors and can even be programmed to carry out tasks like tilling and planting a field autonomously.<\/p>\n

When the new tractor broke down during planting season last year, however, he had to wait four days for an authorized technician to come fix it \u2013 at a cost of nearly $10,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried everything. Couldn\u2019t get it to work. So, we just waited for them to come and he put that code in,\u201d Wood said. \u201cIf they would have just told us the code, we could have put it in ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wood\u2019s experience is far from unique. Farmers and ranchers across Colorado can\u2019t fix their equipment because manufacturers don\u2019t give them access to the specialized tools and technical manuals to do so.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s going to change soon, however. A new state law recently signed by Gov. Jared Polis guarantees the right to repair one\u2019s own agriculture equipment by requiring manufacturers to hand over parts, software, instructions and other necessary tools. The law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2024.<\/p>\n

The law is the first of its kind in the U.S., although other states have tried and failed to pass similar legislation, including Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Texas and Vermont.<\/p>\n

The head of the National Farmers Union, Rob Larew, said that\u2019s mostly because lawmakers don\u2019t understand the problem. To him, it\u2019s an individual rights issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we think about it as our car or our phone or something like that, we have this idea that this is our property, right?\u201d Larew told KUNC. \u201cFarmers are very independent. They feel the exact same way about their equipment that they\u2019ve made an incredible investment in.\u201d<\/p>\n

State Rep. Brianna Titone helped write Colorado\u2019s new right-to-repair law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis puts them in that category of being able to have the latest, greatest equipment, be able to stay on top of their repairs, and keep the production going,\u201d Titone said. \u201cProducing more stuff to grow and feed our communities \u2013 that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titone sponsored the new legislation along with Republican Rep. Ron Weinberg. Most of his GOP colleagues voted against the bill though, including Rep. Richard Holtorf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is big government forcing business to do things, perhaps against their will. It\u2019s an overreaching extension of government.\u201d Holtorf said. \u201cThe real problem is we don\u2019t have enough technicians out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manufacturing trade groups also have fought bills that allow user repairs. Joani Woelful, president of the Far West Equipment Dealers Association, which represents agriculture equipment dealers across the Western U.S., said the industry has put a lot of time and money into training technicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to take everything that the industry has done, all the investment that they\u2019ve made in their employees, and they want you to hand it over to them,\u201d Woelful said.<\/p>\n

Woelful and Holtorf say farmers and ranchers often have to wait days for a technician to show up because there aren\u2019t enough to go around.<\/p>\n

Danny Wood, back in northeastern Colorado, is one of Rep. Holtorf\u2019s constituents. He said the new state law will help take some pressure off the technicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re gonna have plenty of service,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it takes five days for him to come look at your combine and three days for him to come back and look at your tractor, they\u2019re overbooked anyway, so they need some other help.\u201d<\/p>\n

He just wants farmers like himself to be able to fix what they can, when they need to, so they can successfully plant and harvest their crops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new state law requires manufacturers to hand over parts, software, instructions and other necessary tools<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,394,1587,819,28,107,1263],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-farms","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-laws","tag-ranching"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82418,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33953\/revisions\/82418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33953"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}