As Alford and I walk over to see one of his newer tractors we pass what looks like a graveyard of rusty old ones.Īlford says he keeps the old ones around, "Just because I'm a farmer. "I've been farming for the past 30 years and obviously my family much before that."Īlford wears a blue baseball cap with a farm supply company logo across the top, a plaid shirt, bluejeans and work boots. "I do farming on the family ranch," says Alford, standing on a piece of grassy earth with a white barn behind him. Now, farmers are hitting up against an obscure provision of copyright law that makes it illegal to repair machinery run by software. But like a lot of mechanical items, tractors are increasingly run by computer software. The iconic image of the American farmer is the man or woman who works the land, milks cows and is self-reliant enough to fix the tractor. Farmer Dave Alford can't fix his own tractors like this one because it's run by software with proprietary digital locks.
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