USMCA IP provisions make for uneven playing field for Canadian, U.S. farmers

Farmers in North America generally did well in the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). But there is one nasty surprise buried in the agreement that should unite all Canadian farmers—intellectual property rules that prevent circumvention of digital locks on electronics including sophisticated farm equipment like tractors and combines that will apply to Canadian, but not to American, farmers. Currently, in the middle of critical harvest time, a farmer in Emerson, Man., can look across the border to Pembina, N.D., and see a farmer there hack her tractor to fix a problem without consequence. But should the Manitoba farmer try this she would face serious sanction. Or more starkly, the Manitoba farmer could drive their tractor across the border to hack the software without problem or sanction, but should she drive the tractor back into Canada she would be driving into trouble.The problem succinctly is that the modern tractor or combine contains more lines of code than was on any American lunar mission. In the past, when a tractor would break down a farmer would grab a wrench or call any local mechanic. But now when software stops a tractor—God forbid in the middle of harvest with a year’s income on the line—the farmer must wait for an authorized manufacturer’s service technician to drive out, “unlock” the software, diagnose and hopefully fix the problem; a problem that the farmer or local mechanic could have fixed if they could unlock the software. But digital locks now embedded within the tractor’s software mean that accessing this software is against the law for anyone other than a manufacturer-authorized repair person—anyone including the farmer who owns the equipment.