Aaron Lehman is the fifth generation to run his family farm in central Iowa. He uses six tractors and grows corn, soybeans, oats and hay on 500 acres.
He enjoys it because “the time you put in, the money you put in, the things you learn can be put to immediate use to benefit your farm and benefit your family”, Lehman, 58, said.
Still, he cannot entirely shape his own destiny. He would like to upgrade his tractors to ones that are more fuel efficient and collect data on the rate at which fertilizer is applied, among other information.
But he said he has been reluctant to purchase the expensive equipment in part because manufacturers make it difficult for farmers to repair the machines themselves.
“Farmers have been fixing their own equipment as long as they have been farming, and it’s essential to the sustainability of our farms that we be able to have that control over the equipment,” said Lehman, who is also president of the Iowa Farmers Union.
He hopes farmers can gain more agency over their equipment through bipartisan state legislation that would require manufacturers to make documents, parts, software, firmware and tools available to independent repair facilities and consumers at “fair and reasonable terms and costs”.
Federal and state lawmakers across the US have proposed dozens of similar so-called “right-to-repair” pieces of legislation that would make it easier for individuals to fix cars, phones and wheelchairs, among other items.
While critics of the right-to-repair movement and some industry leaders argue that such bills create environmental risks and allow people to steal intellectual property, supporters say they are needed because corporations have monopolized control over repairs, forcing customers to either pay a large sum to the company or just buy new products.
The wave of new legislation, they say, would return more power to the people.
“We think it is common sense that when stuff breaks, you should be able to fix it,” said Nathan Proctor, senior director of the right-to-repair campaign for the consumer advocacy group PIRG.
The right-to-repair movement originated in the 1920s, when automotive companies such as General Motors intentionally made vehicle repairs difficult to encourage new purchases, according to a report from EBSCO.
Fast forward to 2001, when House Democrats and Republicans tried and failed to pass legislation that would have required the automakers to share the necessary information to diagnose, service and repair vehicles.
Lawmakers continued to push for such measures. In 2012, Massachusetts became the first state to approve an automotive right-to-repair bill. Auto manufacturers and aftermarket groups then reached an agreement in 2014 to provide independent repair shops the information, data and tools needed to fix their cars.
This year, legislators have introduced more than 50 bills across 22 states, according to PIRG, including ones in Florida that concerns wheelchairs, in Missouri about motorcycles, and in Ohio that would apply to a variety of products, including digital devices, aircrafts and construction equipment.
At the federal level, House Democrats and Republicans want to pass the Repair Act, which states that “a motor vehicle manufacturer may not employ any technological barrier or specified legal barrier that impairs the ability of a motor vehicle owner” to “access vehicle-generated data”.
Even though automakers made concessions more than a decade ago, they have continued to prevent consumers from accessing their vehicle data. That then makes it harder for independent mechanics to diagnose and fix the machines.
The heads of General Motors and Ford met in June with Donald Trump, who said afterwards: “They don’t want people to fix their car. I said, that’s strange; I’ve never heard of that.”
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group for carmakers, stated in court that releasing vehicle data would “reduce the security of these systems, seriously hampering manufacturers’ attempts to keep vehicle data and vehicle systems safe”.
Trump approved a memorandum in June that, among other things, directs the Environmental Protection Agency to expedite “alternative certification pathways for aftermarket parts, reducing reliance on California’s slow and costly certification process”.
The agreement does not mention vehicle data. The Alliance expressed support for the announcement.
Ike Brannon, a senior fellow at the Jack Kemp Foundation, argues that right-to-repair advocates have “greatly exaggerated the problem”.
The primary reason farmers want to tinker with their tractors is to “make this thing go faster, and the reason that there is a governor installed is to meet EPA regulations”, Brannon said. “This isn’t some kind of ploy to screw over anybody.”
Also, consumers want to access a device’s software code so they can reproduce it, Brannon argues.
“If people can replicate your intellectual property” then “you are going to make less money”, Brannon said. Companies will then “spend less effort trying to figure out how to innovate”.
Lehman, the Iowa farmer, said that even if lawmakers approve right-to-repair legislation, that would not eliminate emissions regulations, “so there is really no reason to think that farmers are just going to start breaking the law”.
Trade secret laws would also still ensure that “legitimate innovations that are secret in the organization can remain secret”, Proctor pointed out.
“Companies have extended what intellectual property means to things that are not actually protected by intellectual property law. Our intellectual property laws were not meant to prevent people from understanding how your product works,” Proctor said.
The Iowa House approved the right-to-repair legislation in April. A John Deere representative told Wired that the proposed law would “go far beyond enabling self‑repair and mandate government interference dictating how manufacturers and dealers make certain digital tools available”.
Lehman said the chances of it passing “are really good. The momentum is building”.
Travis Bruce has spent seven years working in Portland, Oregon, at the Fix Hut, which offers repair services for phones, computers and video game systems. The right-to-repair movement has made it “substantially easier to get access to” the parts they need, he said.
There is also greater demand for their repair services because of the growing conversation around right to repair, he said. The Hut’s revenue has increased 15% this year compared with the same time last year.
“We are unfortunately in a culture where we don’t really own anything anymore,” Bruce said. “I think it’s really important that we are able to preserve the stuff that we do own and make it last as long as we possibly can.”
