The Latest Battleground for Iowa Farmlands Reform—Again
Iowa lawmakers voted to advance state House bill 751 last week, legislation that would ensure that farmers in the state can freely repair their agricultural equipment, such as tractors. This Tuesday, the bill has been renamed House File 2709, and will be voted on again. If the political winds align, it will pass the Iowa House and Senate before the Iowa Legislature adjourns on April 21.
The bill is the first of nearly 57 federal bills supported by repair advocates across the country through 2026. Many of them focus on farm products in states such as Oklahoma, Wyoming, Delaware, and West Virginia. Repair advocates hope that a win in Iowa—the second-biggest state in the U.S. for agricultural products, behind California—will help other legislative and broader efforts to make phones, cars, and other devices more repairable.
“This isn’t just a green country thing; this isn’t just a Colorado activist thing,” said Elizabeth Chamberlain, director of sustainability at repair advocate iFixit. Farmers are struggling to maintain their machinery and want a change.
Farmers and their tractors have long been at the center of the repair movement, an ever-growing global effort to allow product owners to repair their equipment and equipment without the manufacturer’s approval. Farmers who use tractors to plant, plant and harvest crops often need to adjust their equipment while working. Waiting for a manufacturer’s approval to make a repair, or taking time to bring equipment to an approved location, can cause delays, frustration, and missed opportunities to harvest crops.
The Iowa bill defines what agricultural equipment includes, including tractors, trailers, combines, sprayers, bales, and other equipment used to plant and harvest crops. Excludes airplanes and irrigation equipment, as well as jet skis and snowmobiles.
Manufacturers will also be required to provide owners with data—documentation, such as manuals, and access to embedded operating software—on their tractors, including upcoming patches and repairs, all without charging them or requiring authorization for Internet access. The bill also restricts the use of digital keys—software restrictions that prevent access to features without the manufacturer’s permission.
Oh Deere
The biggest opponent of the Iowa bill is tractor manufacturer John Deere, which has a long history of reform efforts that oppose and frustrate farmers who want more control over their equipment. The company is still fighting a lawsuit by the US Federal Trade Commission that charged John Deere in January 2025 with “illegal” maintenance policies. The company sought to fight the Iowa bill and is strongly opposed to its passage.
“John Deere is committed to supporting farmers’ ability to repair their equipment,” a John Deere representative wrote in a statement in response to a WIRED investigation. “And we support that by providing industry-leading maintenance tools and services to both equipment owners and service providers.”
John Deere points to its online repair site with a catalog of ways its product owners can repair their products. Chamberlain says it’s true that John Deere offers repair options, but they don’t always match the reality of what farmers need to fix right now.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter how many repairs are possible if there are repairs that slow down your equipment and that means losing a harvest or waiting weeks for a dealer to come out,” Chamberlain said.
John Deere said it supports third-party and self-repairs of its machines in the past. In 2023, John Deere and the American Farm Bureau agreed on a memorandum of understanding about how the company will allow access to maintenance of its products in response to maintenance laws passed in states such as Colorado. But reform advocates criticized the move, saying the memorandum does little to bring John Deere into compliance with the new rules.
