Farmers demand right to repair: no choice means no competition

Barriers to the repair of farm machinery are a serious and longstanding issues that need to be fixed, writes VFF grains group president Ashley Fraser.

Lack of competition in the farm machinery servicing and repair market is costing farmers dearly. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

ANY farmer understands the increasingly vital role agricultural machinery plays and the significant financial investment needed for today’s modern farming industry.

In many ways, it forms a cornerstone of everyday farming life, right through from sowing to harvest, to the ever-expanding reliance on machinery in rotary dairies and automated egg grading production systems for example.

However, buyers of agricultural machinery do not share the same consumer rights in comparison to many similar industries when it comes to machinery maintenance and repair.

For comparison, when buying a car, the purchaser can choose freely where to service and repair their vehicles in the event something goes wrong.

This unfortunately is not the case for agricultural machinery.

While many individual dealers and manufacturers provide excellent products and service, there remain very few avenues of recourse for consumers in the event something goes wrong.

This is why the Victorian Farmers Federation strongly supports the need for greater competition and consumer protections within the agricultural machinery after-sales market.

We also are calling for the Australian Consumer Guarantee to be amended to include agricultural machinery.

It makes sense that agricultural machinery warranties be prohibited from permitting only authorised dealers to conduct aftermarket services.

It will come as no surprise to farmers that the barriers to the repair of farm machinery are a serious and longstanding issue that needs to be fixed.

As an industry, we understand that dealerships have invested significant funds into training, parts, tools and equipment and they deserve to have a return on that investment, however this should not be a reason to limit competition.

It is clear that a “right to repair” needs to be created to remove restrictions to allow the owner of the machinery to make their own choices when it comes who services and repairs agricultural machinery, and when you buy the machinery you must have access to the software for fault codes and programming.

If something goes down you can end up waiting all day just to get on to someone.

Yet there are technicians in this country who have the expertise to write this software and fault find, but they’re not given access by machinery manufacturers.

● Ashley Fraser is Victorian Farmers Federation grains group president

MORE

XAG R150 UNMANNED GROUND VEHICLE A ‘WORLD FIRST’ FOR FARMING

PRECISION PLANTING UNDER THE MICROSCOPE FOR WINTER CROPS

PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION BACKS ‘RIGHT-TO-REPAIR’ COMPETITION IN FARM MACHINERY