John Deere Africa | Africa Inc. Magazine Interview with Jaco Beyers

Jakao. We are very glad to interview you from Nairobi. We are interviewing you for a program we call Africa Rising, which is a series of interviews that we are doing with business leaders across the continent talking about business technology and the future of this beautiful continent of ours. We are quite glad that you have been part of the team declare.

Teza Hia hia hia hia hia hia hia kufu Back then, we started as agricultural company in 1837. Now we are working with the head producer of agricultural equipment and construction equipment on the continent. 17 years ago I started as a field territory manager working with local dealers here in South Africa and then expanded into additional management roles into sub -Saharan Africa. I had an opportunity to do strategic planning for Southeast Asia, China, India and then I moved to the UAs where I worked on a few projects for Africa, Middle East and now I'm fortunate to be the managing director for Africa, Middle East. I'm two kids, so trying to balance family life, work life balance and then of course driving this ship. I'm fortunate to work with one of the, I believe the best agricultural company on the continent. Dealer network, second to none. A dealer network that invests millions on infrastructure tools and so forth to ensure we can look after our customers. But then also in the last three months we took over the construction and forestry division so now we can look after the infrastructure mining all the way to food security for Africa and really looking forward to that challenge and take our well -known agricultural brand just to the next level.

In the last one year plus we've gone through the COVID -19 pandemic I just wanted to know how your business has handled that and if there are any small changes that you've had to make during this time.

Good, good question. Yes, COVID -19 has been a massive challenge. Fortunately for us we've got these, we call them dealers of tomorrow, strong dealers with the right infrastructure that we're able to keep our customers going. For us the challenge was logistically ensure we get the right parts still for our customers and if you think of it when a farmer needs to plant they need to plant in that specific day otherwise they lose the planting window is just so short and we moved almost heaven and earth in order to ensure we can get the parts there in time and when not we made plans. We're not out of COVID yet I think we're still going to be with it for quite some time but we managed to put from a plan A to a plan Z to ensure continuity as we ensure we can keep our customers going and remember now it's on the construction side it's on the agricultural side all these customers are quite critical we also moved to a digital phase in communicating to our customers we launched a platform called Tech Terrain actually also then in Kenya available where we share new technologies and actually started to gaining some really good traction on that front as well Francis.

Yes, now what I was saying is that as a business as yondia in the African Middle East region you said you are covering agriculture and you've added recently construction and forestry so I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about some of the solutions that we provide in those three segments.

Francis I'll answer you in three elements the first one on the agricultural side then we'll do construction and then the forestry side so on construction, on the agricultural side we bring solutions from the small new era farmer all the way to the large agro processor or say differently from the used piece of equipment maybe 30 years old all the way to a brand new combine we've got a brand promise to look after those those customers and bring in technologies in order to improve the productivity of a customer now when it comes to a new era farmer he can be something as a tractor, ripper and a planter combination believe it or not that's actually technology that will help the farmer be more productive do you think of it Francis? in Africa a lot of farmers are planting for the last 30 years with a disc plow that means there's a hard pan of about 15 centimeters and then that the water can't penetrate deeper bringing a little planter, a geripper that can rip through it you can harvest the water and you can get a proper root development with the proper John Deere planter we can get the correct seed spacing fertilizer spacing and by doing that we call it the John Deere smart farm where we try and show these technologies to new era farmers we actually improved the yield from an average of 1 .7 tons to something like 775 tons now that's massive when it comes to food security when it comes to productivity for that farmer the same is when it comes to large pieces of equipment where we've got self adjusting combines leveraging artificial intelligence so that's on the agricultural side what's awesome is on the construction side we've got stuff like smart grade now hats off to all those grader operators I didn't realize how challenging it is and what skill level you need in order to run that piece of equipment with smart grade we make it easy for a newer less developed operator to run at the same efficiency the most expensive operator is a grader operator so we're trying to make it more efficient for the people running that pieces of equipment the same applies when it comes to forestry we have got a vested interest to ensure we've got our great responsibilities to protect our forests be as productive when it comes to harvesting these equipment and we've got world class technologies when it comes to forestry in a nutshell I wanted to share that if that works for you Francis so.

What I was saying is that we're in a continent where majority of farmers are still using the plow to work on their fields and within the same space we've got brands like yours with more than 100 years experience providing new technologies so what I was asking is that how your brand and company is adopting technologies that can be taken up by the kind of clients that you have across the continent where in terms of agriculture technology is still a big gap most farmers haven't really taken up the right technology still.

I think I shared some of that already in a previous question but let me build on it and maybe how do you to add on to that Francis is how do we make technology affordable for new era farmers and what we as John Deere are doing and we're quite proud is what we've realised is not every farmer will be able to afford a tractor ripper plant or package that I just explained in a previous question but what we've developed is new business models and we call it one of them is the tractor hiring model where you get a community to purchase together or a family purchase a tractor and some implements together and now they doing a hiring for their community or their neighbours so they work their farmland plus the local farmers around by doing that very very quickly you get that vested interest from a community with the right technologies and you actually creating a business with additional employment because we've got a few two key issues in Africa one is you need to create jobs and the other one is food security and with this equipment hiring centre we believe we've got a great solution the other piece that I want to ask and what we always ask governments is please don't give tractors away we've done a few studies and realised for every 46 % of tractors that was given away from a government was actually went to a tractor graveyard worth in 36 months now that's a alarming number what we've done in the last 15 years was work first piloted and now work we call it a smart campaign working with governments to share what's the fundamentals when a farmer is putting down a deposit you get a buy in and then you've got a vested interest to make it work we've got success stories across this continent from east to west Africa on this these are some really critical elements that we want to bring to put on the table another element is we've got John Deere financial that works with our dealer network on solutions for the farmer as I said we're looking from a small new era farmer all the way to large agro processes trying to find the right solution for the customer.

Okay one thing we've noted and I think we've reported on our Afrikaink magazine website is of course you've recruited new trade partners recently and of course you have a strategy now getting new partners rejiging your business how do you think this move in getting new partners is going to work out for you and then who is your ideal partner who are the kind of partners you work.

With across the continent so you might be referring we've made a few announcements the one is under construction we're now responsible for construction and forestry and it's actually a strategic plan for us as we've got these large dealer organizations across the continent that made huge investments in agriculture now agriculture is actually quite cyclical you've got droughts and you've got quite challenges in the different parts of Africa in different years by bringing in the construction side we act overlays to they never in the same trough at the same time which means now my dealers can actually invest more if you look at what goes into a dealership there's a mammoth amount of investment when it comes to spare parts the training, the technicians give you an idea we've got more than 750 technicians at this point on this continent then it comes to the sales organization now we overlay the construction side we can leverage a lot of the same infrastructure yes the business we're going to run the business separately because a customer on the construction side you need to treat completely different than one on the agricultural side but for the company overall we feel this is the way forward and this is the way we're going to help drive further investment and development in Africa Africa needs infrastructure we need to leverage our resources in Africa and then the abundance in development of agriculture we want to tap on and bring additional infrastructure yes we are the leading player on this continent but there's way more that John Deak can do in order to evolve with the farmers on this continent then if I can add a second element and that's we've added North Africa and Middle East as well and that may be the second announcement that you saw in France so there we are used to dealing in sub -Saharan Africa with every country is different there's a lot of volatility now we've got specialists that now have to handle it in sub -Saharan Africa and we're going to leverage our team to help grow our new dealers in North Africa and Middle East and really looking forward to take this organization to the next level as we grow Africa.

Now let us talk about the digital world because everything is now digital every person is working around with a phone across this continent mobile money and all amount of staff so in terms of these three segments that you are focusing on what is the opportunity around digital tools that can probably increase efficiency reduce costs for the kind of customers you are looking and working for.

Across the region the commodity pricing I'm like just shows you what can happen in Africa but then luckily next to him the contractor came with the genre pieces of equipment now farmers in Africa for them seeing is believing they want to see the technology on this continent the challenges it's a vast place Africa I think I referenced early on we launched last year with this pandemic a thing called tech terrain now that's a digital digital platform where we share with farmers African stories and success stories of technology on the continent and for the viewers please go to techterrain .co .za and have a look at these success stories from emerging farmers to large large operations and we moving now into season 2 where we actually want to elaborate and expand that's one element then if you talk operation center now that's a cloud based platform where we help farmers record and store all the data from yield mapping in other words their farm and what's the yield year over year you overlay what is the seed placement because these days you can even vary variable rate your seed population based on the swell types so you overlay that your fertilizer application because it's in a digital in a cloud based platform you can share it with your agronomist you can share it with the seed supplier, fertilizer supplier so we work with a lot of third parties that's another element when it comes to the digitization and then connected support you know the size of Kenya the size of Angola the size of the continent how do you look after that pieces of equipment when it comes to the support we've got something called connected support where the tractor or the combine or the self -propelled sprayer itself will let the farmer or the dealer know there's something that might go wrong there might be some issue on a bearing and will tell you to stop and let the dealer know to bring a different part so we call it preventative maintenance linked with connected support so so those are relatively new for the continent South Africa we've been running it for a few years now but some really great technologies we can leverage and because we we call it one deer these same technologies apply now for the construction side and we are looking for to bring those technologies to the construction industry as well.

Ok, now towards the end let's now talk about the future you've got a huge continent plus the Middle East you've got a strategy but then maybe can you share with us your kind of dreams and opportunities and challenges that you are looking for in the next 5 years to solve as a company if I.

Can give you a virtual hug I would because it's a good question we quite bullish on the success of agriculture construction mining on this continent there is no more arable land available you can't make arable land so the time for Africa to develop is now that's why we that's why we're investing in these technologies we're bringing in large organizations to run our dealerships to help train and work with with farmers with contractors with construction and mining operations because we're sitting with all these resources that we can leverage it's now and we've got technology Francis that we can do it more efficiently we can operate at the same level as farmers and operators in the rest of the world and we've got the infrastructure so we're quite bullish we feel we're going to we're going to expand we're ramping up to support our dealers our customers as to the best of our ability so we we're quite bullish on the future of Africa we've got dealers that's willing to invest we've got the technology we've got the portfolio to support mining operations the construction and then farmers from the new era farmer all the way to the large corporate organizations across the continent I do want to point out maybe there's maybe a few challenges that hopefully there's some governments that might also listen to your program and some of those challenges out there that will help improve food security and improve technology adoption is actually bureaucracy and red tape when it comes to establishing signals for example when it comes to GPS you can see this directory next to me these things can actually run autonomously for most of the operation but you need specific signals and as John Deere we proud ourselves in doing things ethically so it takes sometimes a heck of a lot of time in order to get correct approvals from government if there's ways for them to understand the urgency that will definitely help another one is the high taxes and import duties Francis if you think of what we can do to support farmers with new technologies but then you look at the amount of taxes loaded on these new technologies if there's a way governments can help reduce definitely it will make an improvement on the productivity of agriculture even on the construction site I thought I might just throw out those two Francis because here's the thing we can bring all these things but we also want to make sure we play we're a good corporate citizen in all the countries that we do business in and do the right things but sometimes you've got this bureaucracy that you're struggling to fight.

Through maybe a question that I should have asked earlier maybe across the continent plus the Middle East what kind of footprint do you have as you go towards the end and do you have any manufacturing plants or service centers across the region just in brief it's a.

It'S a good question so we run across the entire African continent plus the near middle near Middle East with really strong dealer networks we don't have a 100 % manufacturing plant we do have some local assembly that happens that our dealers apply actually across the entire continent we will do some local assembly on some of the smaller tractors Francis.

Okay we promise that we would want to do it in 30 minutes but I just want to give you an opportunity really to make a point that we have left out if there's anything really that you might want to close with this is a chance.

Francis thank you for your time I want to recap and actually finish with our internal of India we've got a new purpose statement that statement says we run so life can leap forward it's actually touches me almost emotionally when you think of we supply equipment but our equipment is actually helping the farmer far more productive helping helping building infrastructure so we can get kids to schools if you look at Africa there's such a great piece of such vast opportunities but we need to start some way and the future is now we're getting into a new era of development there will always be issues but with the right partners Africa Africa is the new frontier and John Deere has been here from the start with mechanization and we're going to leap Africa into the into the future and bringing technology moving all of us to that next level so thank you we've got the best dealer network of the largest footprint please search us on Facebook or on our website talk to our dealers we would like to engage and help grow the business thank you yeah, with.

That positive note I think we are truly grateful to have gotten the time to talk to us Nairobi and Jobargo kept on they are not very far away from each other but with these new tools we were able to talk to innovators and entrepreneurs and the people were really making it work so we are really grateful that we got this opportunity to talk to you and with those few remarks I think we'll close but let's keep talking as the business grows and let's talk again after a.

Year or two thank you thank you Francis, appreciate it.