The States Forum - Fair Markets for Rural America
Food systems program manager Claire Kelloway contributes to the debate that rural economic decline is not inevitable but the result of policy failures—particularly weakened antitrust enforcement—and calls for state-level action to restore competition through right-to-repair laws, fair grocery pricing, and stronger healthcare merger reviews.
Every election season, red and blue maps reinforce the myth of “two Americas,” the wealthy, liberal cities and the declining, conservative countryside. Pundits paint rural communities as economically stagnant, predominantly white, deeply bigoted places that vote against their own interests and deserve either pity or scorn. This narrative erases the diversity of rural America as well as the commonalities between urban and rural Americans struggling with historic economic inequality and unchecked corporate power.
While the urban-rural divide may seem insurmountable, it is much newer than pundits would lead you to believe. Stark rural polarization only began in the mid-1990s, spurred at first by economic stagnation brought on by globalization and neoliberal policies, and then deepened with the rise of partisan media and what scholars have identified as a growing rural resentment.
But as with urban inequality, rural stagnation is not inevitable; it is a policy choice. One neoliberal policy mistake that hit rural and urban economies hard was the death of anti-monopoly enforcement. Since the 1980s, both parties have allowed corporations to buy up rivals and use illegal exclusionary business practices. Decades of unchecked monopolization hurt small businesses and innovation and have given corporations more power to raise or fix prices.
A post-neoliberal economic platform demands new labor, trade, and tax policies; but in this essay, I will focus on examples of state-level anti-monopoly policy. Rural voters across the political spectrum disdain monopolies and corporate greed, particularly in agriculture, and support government action to promote fair competition. From cracking down on repair monopolies to leveling the playing field for independent grocers, state lawmakers have many options to combat corporate consolidation and exploitation in rural America.
Let people fix their things
Farmers’ incomes can depend on harrowingly narrow windows of opportunity: They have a couple of days of ideal conditions to plant their crops, apply fertilizer, or harvest before an unexpected freeze or rain ruins everything. The last thing they want during these make-or-break sprints is for their tractor to give out.
Take the case of Jared Wilson, a farmer in Missouri who needed to apply fertilizer quickly after extreme rain set back his usual routine by two months. Wilson’s John Deere fertilizer spreader should have been able to do the job, but he discovered an issue with the hydraulics during a system check. Wilson needed to run more diagnostics to identify the source of the problem, but he could not access John Deere’s proprietary diagnostic software himself, so he had to bring his machine, full of fertilizer, to the dealership. When those repairs took longer than expected, Wilson couldn’t afford to ship his equipment to the next closest dealership, roughly 80 miles away. In the end, Wilson’s spreader stayed in the shop for 32 days, which prevented him from applying much fertilizer that season and cost him two to three days of planting. Wilson thinks the whole ordeal and lost time cost his operation $30,000 to $60,000. Deere identified that his problem was a mechanical valve, which Wilson believes he could have fixed himself, had he had the schematics and diagnostic tools.
Much like today’s automobiles, modern farm equipment is full of computerized parts and software. Digital barriers prevent farmers from diagnosing issues or completing repairs themselves. Some error codes completely shut down tractors until an authorized technician comes to plug in their computer, figure out what’s wrong, make the fix, and unlock a digital key to complete it.
Corporations like John Deere have, in effect, monopolized the repair of their equipment, which is highly profitable for them (with profit margins as much as five times those of equipment sales) but devastating for farmers who cannot afford to wait hours, days, or even weeks for a fix. Farm equipment manufacturers often do not have enough authorized technicians to cover peak demand periods like planting and harvest, exacerbating delays right when farmers need repairs most. One report estimated that tractor downtime and higher repair costs cost U.S. farmers over $4 billion a year. Farmers increasingly seek out tractors from the 1970s and 1980s that they can fix themselves without a computer. In 2020, 45-year-old tractors with low mileage sold for more than $40,000, and even $60,000.
John Deere isn’t the only corporation that figured out it pays to control repair. Life-saving medical devices, home appliances, and electronics all increasingly include software locks or proprietary parts that only the original manufacturer or authorized techs can get around. These restrictions shut out local independent repair shops that could provide more timely or affordable service. Centralized repair particularly hurts people in rural areas who must travel farther or wait longer to get things fixed. The idea that you or your neighbor can’t tinker with your property offends a rural value of self-reliance.
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