Tony talks with John Deere's Jakub Bears and Henty Breath about Tech Terrain Season 2, a program that gives African farmers practical advice and integrated solutions to improve profitability and sustainability during the pandemic.
Now, in 2020, we introduced the program Tech Terrain powered by John Deere. It was all online and obviously it was because of the COVID 19 pandemic. We are still in the pandemic in 2021, but we're bringing you the second season of of Tech Terrain. It's going to be very exciting, a few changes made to the show. And to clarify all of this, I've got two gentlemen here from John Deere. I want to introduce Jakub Bears and Henty Breath in the studio. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me. Are you well, Jaku?
Yes, thanks. Dhoni, let me start with you.
Yaku. So a bit of a different twist this time around. What are we focusing on in 2021's tech terrain?
Dhoni, we're excited to be back with Tech Terrain and we started Tech Terrain because of the pandemic and we wanted to convey a message and connect with the farmers. Now, since the hard lockdown, we've been able to go out and meet the farmers, but subsequently we've learned that the farmers actually enjoyed the Tech Terrain show because of the editorial content. It's not just, yes, John Deere is sponsoring it, but we're getting industry leaders and thought leaders to share best practices and a big request to say, can we build on it? What we're doing now is we're actually doing a deep dive. We're going to the farm and we're trying to build a hub of content. If you ask a farmer, where do they get the information? They all go on YouTube and they Google stuff across the, across the globe. What they're saying is seeing is believing. And we hope with Tech Terrain 2.0 we going to reach those farmers with a central depository of information in Tech Terrain.
Okay, so you're taking the discussion a lot closer to the farmers themselves. Just still on the first Tech Terrain, was it a success and in what ways was this a success?
So it was a massive success, but also a big learning curve. As we said, we want to be virtual, we want to share. But what was great was the interactions and as the farmers communicated to say, you know what, we like this, give us more. And there were some elements we realized, okay, that's maybe a bit, a bit too much. But the big elements was keep it at good editorial content. That's, that's, that's best practices for all farmers. Actually South Africa, but then the rest of the continent as well. That was pretty amazing.
100%. Okay, Henty, let me bring you in here as well. Just what we've learned during the pandemic is a lot of people we're working online. You don't get the opportunity to visit your clients, be it farmers and so forth. Whoever's using your product at the present moment, how has that changed the way you've operated and how did you manage?
Tony, thank you. And I will link it back to our Tech Terrain series because like Jako mentioned, that was a result of the fact that we've not been able to connect to get in touch with our customers afterwards after the outlook down, like Yaku said, we were able to visit customers here and there. We got some feedback and from that point we decide it's time for detector in season two because we can't still host events like we used to do. And techtrain won briefly from my side, if I can refer back to it, it happened in a time last year when it was so important to keep communication flowing, especially in the agricultural industry and at the macro level. Now interacting with our customers, that's what excite me about season two. So we're taking it actually level down and literally moving closer to the soil and to our farmers and we want to provide them practical advice and help them to become more profitable, more sustainable in their farming operations. Now unfortunately we still have the COVID situation with us, but despite that and of course within the necessary safety and precautionary measures, we will bring farmers in the next couple of months practical on farm demonstrations and solutions and advice not only from a mechanization and the John Deere point of view, but we've taken hands with various suppliers in the industry as well as partners and advisors and we want to unpack farming operations as integrated businesses across different production systems.
And Yaku, we know we were talking about the pandemic and how it's affected everybody, affected yourselves as a business, as John Deere, but it's also affected the farmers and the people that you as John Deere call clients, isn't it? Adversely?
Yes, Tony, unfortunately this is a very negative connotation to Covid. But if you look at the macro level, agriculture actually showed the country the dependence on it and believe the major contribution to GDP on agriculture is one of the little lights that's out there and we hope we can contribute to all sectors within the agricultural space and believe Tech Terrain is one of those mediums that we can just help with best practices and elevate production at all levels.
Hinty this particular season, I know you did mention this earlier, you want to focus on profitability, we're focusing on already all the aspects that make a good farming business. Why did you want to look at that this particular year?
So we've realized, and we actually know it from John Deere's side, we focused on mechanization and providing technology and solutions to our farmers. But technology and mechanization can't be successful on their own. It's an integrated business. Therefore, we take hands with, like I've mentioned, various input suppliers and other role players in the industry to provide ultimate solution and to help the farmers to move closer to them to become more sustainable and more profitable. And by doing that, of course, it will help the total agricultural industry in the country, and ultimately our country as a whole.
Fantastic stuff. All right, thank you so much, gentlemen. The most important question, though, is, Jakub, why did you decide to have me back?
You've got such a pretty fight.
Oh, thank you. That's all I wanted to hear, guys. Thank you so much. So we're looking forward to this season of Tech Terrain, which starts very shortly. And we're inviting you, wherever you are, whether in South Africa or throughout the continent, to participate as we look at farming holistically in 2021. Join me for Tech Terrain.
