Farm equipment giant John Deere announced this year it is investing nearly $20 billion over the next decade to bolster its U.S. operations as part of its ongoing commitment to American manufacturing.
“We look forward to carrying forward our founder’s legacy of ingenuity as we continue building and investing in America,” Cory Reed, president of Deere & Co.’s worldwide agriculture and turf division for production and precision agriculture in the Americas and Australia, told FOX Business.
“We were born here, and we’re here to stay.”
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The company’s $20 billion investment focuses on the development of new products, “cutting-edge” technology and more advanced manufacturing capabilities, Reed said.
Founded in 1837 in Grand Detour, Illinois, by blacksmith John Deere, the company has made significant investments in the U.S. in recent years to expand and modernize its factories and build new ones.
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John Deere is building a $70 million factory in Kernersville, North Carolina, which will be dedicated to manufacturing excavators, Reed said.
The company recently completed a $40 million expansion at its Des Moines, Iowa, factory to build See & Spray sprayers, which use computer vision and artificial intelligence to detect and target weeds. It also invested nearly $150 million to renovate its factory in East Moline, Illinois, to build its new X9 combines, which raise harvesting capacity by around 45%, according to the John Deere website.
“These investments are helping us solve some of our customers’ biggest challenges,” Reed said. “Our customers are the backbone of our communities, and we’re proud to provide the solutions that make their jobs easier and more efficient.”
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Nearly 80% of John Deere’s U.S. sales and 25% of its international sales are from products manufactured domestically. The company employs about 30,000 people at more than 60 U.S. locations, and its network of independent U.S. dealerships employs an additional 50,000, Reed said.
Those employment numbers include high school students the company has helped introduce to skilled trades through its apprenticeship program and hundreds of U.S. military veterans hired into a variety of roles in the company, he said.
“We’re proud that, as a company, we’ve helped build America over the past two centuries by supporting farmers, ranchers and construction crews,” Reed said. “We’ve been equipping them to feed, clothe, pave, plant, grow, harvest and build our country for generations.”
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