CB BureauDeere & Co., one of the largest manufacturers of
agricultural equipment in the world, has revised its strategy and will focus
on ‘world hunger’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘subsistence farmers’, the company’s
chairman Samuel R Allen told The Economic
Times in an interview.
Allen revealed that the group’s corporate social
responsibility (CSR) arm, John Deere
Foundation, has a $20 million annual budget. About half of this budget is
invested in ways to fight hunger and uplift the standards of marginal farmers
around the world.
‘As a result of the need to double world food output by
2050, agriculture has become a high-growth opportunity for us. We’re focusing
on how we can contribute to increasing agricultural output in a sustainable
fashion,’ said Allen. Deere & Co. hopes that its vigorous tackling of such
issues, as also its focus on emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Central and
South Asia, will help it double its current size to $50 billion by 2018.
In an effort to understand the farming techniques at the grassroots level, Allen and his team of eight managers from the company’s American office – along with 12 from India – spent over a week in Udaipur. They engaged in a series of farming activities including cutting crops, segregating them into bundles, and building mangers for the cattle. ‘A lot of the villagers who came to watch
thought we were here just for a photo session, but over the past week, they saw
we genuinely wanted to help, though I doubt they know why,’ Allen said.
Deere & Co. chose India after Dr Suman Singh, who heads
the Home Sciences department at Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture &
Technology, did an award-winning project for the International Ergonomics
Association called ‘Mitigating Occupational Health Hazards of Women Farmers
through Educational and Technological Interventions’. The project found its way
to a member of the Deere management, which directed its Pune manufacturing unit
to get in touch with her.
For Deere, this project was a first. For Allen as well, this
was his first time working with owners of small-plot farms. ‘I came here from
Kazakhstan, where I met a farmer with a 1.2 million hectare farm,’ he informed, adding,
‘Here the plot sizes tend to be a millionth of that.’ And while the
timing of the exercise is clearly geared towards making the October 31 close of
Deere’s financial year, Allen realizes he will not be selling any equipment to the
farmers. ‘We’re talking not about equipment (here) but trying to understand
their daily lives and cropping practices. The money from the foundation is
going into sickle knives and building mangers,’ he explained.