> JD sees this coming and wants to be in the best possible position to market its services to land owners.
You may be right, but, if so, this is just another move by a massive corporation to create a vertical monopoly, and extract all the rent in the space. For at least a couple of decades, companies with massive fleets of tractors sweep through the country, working farm fields for the owners, as the seasons change across the states. Your statement makes it seem as if JD could be muscling in on this already-muscled market. Tractors have already been priced out of a lot of farmer's businesses. They may as well cut out these middlemen.