I disagree with the idea that free markets need guardrails for the reasons that I mentioned before: I believe that consensual agreements between people shouldn't normally be regulated by the state, and that when you take a free market and then add "guardrails" to it, it's no longer a "free" market.

All that minimum warranty legislation does is to remove the freedom that people previously had to buy products with shorter warranties, or without one. It means that they can't even buy the same product together with an optional warranty from the manufacturer, thereby ending up with a situation that's functionally identical. Warranties for practically every type of durable product existed before these changes were introduced, and people have always tended to weigh up the projected lifetime (which they can infer from factors such as the availability of manufacturer or third-party warranties or insurance), manufacturer reputation and projected total costs of ownership whenever they have bought something sufficiently expensive.

Agriculture is of course an important industry, but I don't think there's any wider threat to agriculture in this particular case, and if these practices were to create one in the future, the market would respond by punishing a company like JD (and no doubt the state would as well in light of the strategic implications). It just seems like a slow and painful realisation for parts of the industry that things have changed. Hopefully we'll now see plenty of disruption and innovation (and modding ;)).