Rural America Needs to Band Together Against Corporate Greed

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Last year, John Deere announced plans to go 100 percent robotic by 2030. That’s right: in just four more years, the world’s largest tractor manufacturer plans to replace every corn and soybean farmer with robots.

Farmers won’t own the machines, of course. Right now they can’t even repair a machine because the software is only licensed to them. (And with consolidation, they don’t own their choice of seed, fertilizer, pesticide, or herbicide. And they...