Remember that many of their customers are young contractors on credit who have valued ‘brand identity’ over more practical concerns.

You don’t see many old boys on their tractors, in the same way that you wouldn’t see many of them using Apple computers.

My bet is that a decent proportion of the John Deere owners who are up in arms about this are those who bought one while they were young and impressionable, then realised that they were getting punished for it and that they couldn’t offload it on their younger contemporaries because they wanted a new one and couldn’t offload it on their older contemporaries because they were too wise. These modern tractors are enormous investments.