In the increasingly global business of agribusiness, few companies symbolise farming’s worldwide connections better than green and yellow US machinery and technology giant, John Deere.
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The footprint of the world’s biggest farm machinery maker includes markets in 130 countries, global sales and revenues topping $37.3 billion, and a staff of nearly 70,000 employees – including Luke Chandler.
It’s a long way from his youth on North West NSW’s black soil plains to the American Midwest farming heartland which Deere and Company’s chief economist, Mr Chandler, now calls home turf.
These fertile Midwest soils, thick with corn and soybean crops in summer and crusty with snow cover in winter, have sprouted some of agriculture’s biggest business names, from commodities giants Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge, to farm chemical conglomerates, Dow-DuPont and Monsanto, food names ConAgra and McDonalds’ and machinery rivals Caterpillar, CNH and Bobcat.
What happens in food and farming in this part of the US almost certainly impacts on daily decisions farmers, traders and technology developers make all over the world, particularly in rural Australia.
For the past three years, Mr Chandler has worked at the heart of Deere’s world headquarters at One John Deere Place, Moline, Illinois – a company campus of buildings for administration, research and technology development, with the land leftover planted to crops.
Just about everybody you meet in this part of America, whether they be a dentist, stock broker or taxi driver, understands the value of agriculture, and they’re all interested in what John Deere’s up to.
- Luke Chandler, Deere and Company
Actually, his job tends to take him around the world, to Russia, China, Germany, Brazil, India and across rural America, meeting farmers, machinery dealers, investors, government officials and company staff.
The University of New England agricultural economics graduate moved his young family from Sydney to the US in 2015.
He previously worked for a decade with Rabobank, which also included an overseas posting, in London, for three-and-a-half years.
“We still feel like we’re strongly Australian, but each of our children have been born in different countries,” he said.
“Never in my wildest dreams when I finished high school back in Inverell did I think I’d eventually be living in rural America working for a Fortune 100 company.”
His job with John Deere aligns him closely with the senior leadership group of the farm machinery and construction giant, providing market outlook research guidance and strategic insights, including identifying economic influences shaping the company’s global business strategies.
Factors ranging from the recent election of new presidents in Mexico and Brazil, to trade tensions between China and the US, or seasonal and commodity market expectations in Australia are all on his radar.
Interpreting today’s much-disrupted and uncertain global economic scene and its likely impact on Deere’s customers and internal strategy “certainly keeps the job interesting”.
The move to Moline on the Mississippi River has been an exciting and diverse challenge, punctuated with considerable travel, but it was not without some considerable soul-searching at first.
“I wasn’t looking for the opportunity. It really came along out of the blue,” Mr. Chandler said.
“Rabobank was a great employer and I enjoyed my old job.
“But, professionally, the chance to move to Deere actually seemed a relatively easy decision for me.
“On the other hand, on a personal level the prospect of relocating, again, and settling the family in the middle of America was a difficult choice.
“We didn’t know anybody here or have a family support network nearby.”
“In particularly it was harder for Lizzie, my wife. She’s had to resign from three (teaching) jobs over the years because of me.”
As it turned out, the Chandlers found themselves warmly welcome in the US Midwest, settling across the river in Bettendorf, Iowa – “a great place to raise a family”.
“Just about everybody you meet in this part of America, whether they be a dentist, stock broker or taxi driver, understands the value of agriculture to the economy, and they’re all interested in what John Deere’s up to,” he said.
It’s not such a bad thing to be living away from Australia where nobody knows much about rugby, or how badly the Wallabies have been going
- Luke Chandler
Joining a local country club, with its social and sporting facilities, helped build a network of friends outside work, and complemented school community connections.
Last year, the family even ventured off on an American-style RV road trip holiday to get a first-hand feel for their adopted country.
“Yes, we certainly miss family and friends, and the not-so-cold winter weather in Australia – temperatures hardly get above freezing for weeks during winter months in Iowa,” Mr. Chandler said.
“It took time to adapt to the differences, but people here have a reputation for being open and friendly and we’ve acclimated into the community really well.
“And, it’s not such a bad thing to be living away from Australia where nobody knows much about rugby, or how badly the Wallabies have been going.”
Mr Chandler said the chance to twice take his experience into an international agribusiness role was an unforeseen career bonus.
If more people have the chance to experience and understand the way farmers and customers in these countries think, all the better for our industry in Australia
- Luke Chandler
While the farm sector and agricultural exports made valued contributions to the Australian economy, he had no hesitation recommending Australians seek out opportunities to get a better perspective on global supply chains.
“With a population of just 24 million, Australia is relatively small in the global picture, especially when you consider big, fast-moving players like Brazil or China,” he said.
“If more people have the chance to experience and understand the way farmers and customers in these countries think, all the better for our industry in Australia.”
Mr Chandler said Australian farmers were already well respected within the Deere organisation for being “incredibly fast adopters of ag technology”.
“Quite often a lot of our pre-market testing is specifically done in Australia, or feedback is sought from Australian farmers, because they’re open to new technology and have so much exposure to global markets without the benefit of any trade safety nets.”
He said technologies now opening up which had not traditionally been part of agriculture – particularly in the artificial intelligence space – were set to provide many more opportunities to help John Deere customers make better decisions.
Last year, Deere acquired Silicon Valley AI business, Blue River Technology, largely because of its machine learning breakthroughs in crop spraying which individually identify weeds and target them for treatment, cutting spray use almost 90 per cent.
The journey towards more equipment autonomy was partly about solving agriculture’s real concerns on labour availability in a more urbanised world.
“It’s also helping farmers (and their machines) make better decisions, reduce input costs such as chemical and fertiliser, and help the environment.”
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Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
