Washington just took aim at Big Ag's biggest machine makers — and Wall Street flinched hard. The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a joint public inquiry this week into the agricultural equipment market, asking farmers, independent repair shops, and even current and former employees of equipment makers to help identify possible anticompetitive conduct across the industry, according to DTN/Progressive Farmer.

The agencies want to know whether manufacturers and their dealer networks are carving up sales territories, blocking farmers from buying or servicing machinery outside those zones, or coordinating on pricing and customer access — the kind of restrictions that have fueled years of farmer complaints about being stuck paying premium prices for repairs on equipment they already own. Public comments are due by Dec. 7.

The market reaction was immediate and brutal. Shares of Deere & Co. fell as much as 5.7%, AGCO Corp. tumbled 8.4%, CNH Industrial dropped 7.3%, and even Caterpillar — not primarily a farm-equipment maker but caught in the sector-wide selloff — slid as much as 6.4%, per Insurance Journal's Bloomberg-sourced report.

Round two for Deere

This isn't Deere's first brush with regulators over repair access. The new inquiry follows a July 2026 settlement in which Deere resolved an FTC-led lawsuit alleging it had unlawfully restricted farmers and independent repair providers from servicing its own equipment — a deal that required the company to give independent shops the same repair software and resources available to its authorized dealer network.

Officials framed the new probe as the logical next step. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson put it bluntly in the agencies' announcement, cited by DTN:

"They shouldn't have to overcome artificial service barriers to keep their farm machinery running."

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins echoed the complaint, saying the current setup saddles growers with unnecessary costs: "Added costs and lost labor time are the result of these misguided restrictions for our farmers and ranchers."

The timing compounds an already rough stretch for the sector. Farmers have been pulling back on new equipment purchases amid weak crop prices and high interest rates, pressure that was already denting manufacturers' sales well before regulators got involved. Now Deere, AGCO, CNH and the rest face months of public scrutiny — and a December deadline — before Washington decides whether this week's inquiry turns into round two of federal antitrust action against the industry.