Reading Time: 6 minutes Canada’s population is becoming increasingly diverse. Statistics Canada estimates that immigrants made up roughly 22 per cent of the population in 2016, and our country expects to welcome over 400,000 more per year until 2024. This will almost certainly result in a continually growing percentage of visible minorities among Canada’s working age people over the […] Read more
The diversity gap
The slow progress by equipment manufacturers on racial and ethnic diversity is in marked contrast to their success with women
How about lunch?
Here’s a management tip from the big companies. Invest a little more to make lunchtime really worth coming to work for
Reading Time: 5 minutes We’ve all seen that famous old white-knuckle photograph. There’s a group of ironworkers having lunch sitting untethered on a steel girder way up in mid-air, dozens of floors above the street during construction of the Empire State Building. It must get the award for the most sparsely outfitted lunchroom ever. In recent years, by contrast, […] Read more
Watching a new world order unfold
How much damage is 2022 doing to global supply chains for equipment manufacturers?
Reading Time: 6 minutes I remember watching the start of the 1970s BBC series The World at War. The screen showed the wreckage of a French village. Over it, Lawrence Olivier entoned, “Down this road in 1944, the soldiers came. When they left, a community which had lived for a thousand years was dead.” If such a documentary was […] Read more
John Deere goes full throttle
Being the biggest in the world isn’t big enough for John Deere
Reading Time: 6 minutes The strategy is clear. The company isn’t hiding it. Even in its most recent sustainability report, John Deere says it is going all out to make the world’s farmers happy to invest even more money in green precision ag equipment and new technologies. But just how much more? Currently, the brand claims the world’s farmers […] Read more
CNH revs up its strategic plan
CNH Industrial’s new CEO sets a direction he thinks farmers will want to buy into
Reading Time: 6 minutes When a new executive takes over a major corporation, it’s no surprise that a new strategic plan gets announced within a few months. The plan becomes a road map of sorts, revealing the new boss’s objectives and vision for the future. A new broom sweeps clean, as the old proverb says, and it’s what these […] Read more
Sprayer designs save the day
Chemical application is under the microscope, and farmers around the world face future limitations on inputs, especially herbicides
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Welcome to the new world of spraying,” quipped Roeland Coopman, chief commercial officer at Agrifac, a European-based sprayer manufacturer, as he made a presentation during a recent online media conference streamed live from Paris, France. Those words are no exaggeration. How chemicals are applied on farm fields in developed countries across the planet is poised […] Read more
The 4th industrial revolution begins
Mark January 4th down as one of the biggest days in your lifetime
Reading Time: 4 minutes Why January 4th? Well, John Deere, the world’s biggest ag equipment brand, announced that day it is building a fully autonomous 8R tractor for the North American marketplace this year. This is a really big deal. “Autonomy is no longer just a concept or a demo,” said Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at Deere. “It’s […] Read more
A glimpse into the past: How we got to the modern combine
Want to see how much change has come to farming in your parents’ lifetime? Just look at how they get the harvest in
Reading Time: 6 minutes A few years ago I was at John Deere World Headquarters in Illinois for the official unveiling of the brand’s S Series combines. To put some perspective on how big a deal this was, Deere’s marketing team guided us to the building’s large auditorium. There, they put their spotlights on a gleaming, impressive new S9, […] Read more
Used farm equipment sees big demand
There’s something very new — and unsettling — about this year’s used equipment market
Reading Time: 7 minutes This year, any farmer expecting a new tractor in time for spring seeding knows they shouldn’t hold their breath. It may or may not arrive on time. Problems including staff shortages, transportation bottlenecks, a shortage of components — all a result of COVID-19 in one way or another — have hit ag equipment manufacturers simultaneously […] Read more
What’s holding up delivery of your new tractor?
You’ve got a new tractor or combine on order, but will it get built in time? COVID-19 could hardly have hit the world’s farm machinery sector harder, or come at a worse time. Here’s how manufacturers hope to fight back
Reading Time: 5 minutes A few years ago I was standing in a brand new ag equipment manufacturing plant in Germany listening to a senior brand executive talk about its cutting-edge design. Compared to the company’s old facility, he remarked, its storage area was relatively tiny. When asked why, his reply came quickly and with a smile: “We use […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
