John Deere Africa Middle East | From Factory to Farm | interview with Paul Richardel

Paul Richardell I'm the product marketing manager for Planters and application for the region 4 market. I'm responsible for the go to market messaging for products that we produce at our factories here in the U.S.

So Paul, looking at planter technology and planter as a whole, obviously being one of the most important critical operations on a farm, can you give us an overview of why customers should choose the John Deere solution when it comes to choosing a plant and what makes a John Deere planter so unique in the planting operation?

The planting job as we call it now, is more than just the planter itself. It's more than just going in and putting seed down. And we recognize that in most operation, the job of planting is the most critical job to be done because that's really where the cropping system starts. When you put the seed in the ground, then you have to nurture and you have to cultivate that as it grows and then eventually into harvest. But with the John Deere planter being able to choose from one of our three delivery systems, whether you're using our MaxEmerge 5 technology, our Maximum Merge 5 technology, or even our X act emerge technology, we give the operator options of ways to deliver the seed to meet the needs of his farm. Whether that being in the spacing, whether that be in the type of seed carrying with ccs or even in the general the seed delivery. So that's our vacuum meter, finger pickup or our xactemerge brushes. So we recognize that we cover a large swath of growers in the world. And when you cover so many different geographies, different soil types, different customer bases, different requirements on a farm, which is really important to have something for everyone.

Yeah. Talking about the different customer needs and the different geographies, there's obviously a need for different planters in different regions. So John Deere doesn't only offer a conventional planter, but there's multiple planter units available in planting configurations. Can you run us through a high level overview of what type of planters John Deere offers in their portfolio?

Yeah, certainly. So our portfolio, I like to say is again, it's got something for everyone. But we offer machines that are narrow transport. So if you've got situations in your area that require you to get down, down the road without being too wide, whether it be for government regulation or just simply to get down through your, your local environment all the way to. We have machines that are ccs, so central commodity fill if you need to go longer throughout the day, so you have ability to maybe to have more seed on board or more product on board to deliver out to the base. We recognize that that's a need. We have opportunity to put down dry fertilizer as well as liquid fertilizer on our planters that give you again a wider capability to address a lot of those customer needs. Outside of that, we carry our frames differently. If you're going to look at our deer Bauer, we call it the DB version that's going to give you our wheels out front which carries the weight a little bit differently affecting your compaction slightly differently than an nt. That NT version, which is our narrow transport version, gives you a little bit of a different carrying of the weight but also configures the frame in a way that you can do different things with it. So maybe more liquid fertilizer on the main bar, bigger CCS tanks for again more capacity. Those are some of our high level configurations. Outside of that, we offer stack fold, which is also known as integral, which is mounted on the tractor itself. We have drawn those drawn planters are a little bit stretched out. They, they are on a toolbar so they can either be hitch or two point. Those are some more of the different configurations that we offer to meet those needs on the farm.

Another thing that was quite obvious in the South African market specifically there was a big need for, for customers to use dry nutrient fertiliser. And John Deere realized there's a need and they investigated the options. And with that we envisioned that we can get a solution into the market. With that we approached a supplier and we entered into a partnering agreement. Can you maybe shed some light on what's now available for the South African market in terms of large frame plants with granular fertilizer?

Yeah, absolutely. We're proud to have come up with what we call a home run for the South African market. And that's a partnership with Roebic and Lear. They're a frame manufacturer local there to Cape Town. We, we invested in a partnership with them here this past fall and are going to offer those solutions in the market for this coming planting season. It's really a dry fertilizer. The builder put down dry fertilizer so the Rovic will be the front half and then it'll be powered by the John Deere side which electric drives our max emerge 5e and our EE to get, you know, best in class singulation elimination of doubles. So yeah, we're glad to be able to offer that solution in the market at some different configurations that we hope will be a sure hit with within the region.

Speaking of this flexibility, what's I'm thinking, sales strategy, Green on any other color. What's the opportunity there? How do you see that?

Even before this Rovic and Lear proposal with the drawn planter, we were offering a partnership with Orthman Manufacturing here that's produced in the US and then shipped over to South Africa. And we're able to meet the local demands based on the capabilities that that Orthman is able to deliver to us. We do a little bit of that. We think there's a niche in our market to be able to supply bars and local manufacturers. But we do try to be really selective on who we're partnering with. Be really selective on the configuration that those row units go on. Because we recognize that it is the quality of job that we still need to maintain. And by just putting it on anyone's bar, it could jeopardize the quality of the job. So we're selective, but we're also open. We're open to talking about some of that.

I want to come back to the my sales question. So are there examples of that where you guys deliberately try and get, get a foot in the door with, with another color by saying, listen, give it a go, give the product a go?

Yeah, I think what you're talking about is competitive comparisons. We do a lot of going out to farms and say try our product. Our product is as good as what you're experiencing in your choice of color. And if you don't like it, you know, tell us why and what things can we do to earn your business to get it back. If you're referring to taking our, our row units and putting on competitive bars, we don't really explore that very much because we make an industry leading bar. In fact, I would tell you that our bar is on more planters in the US than any other planter bar out there. The row units, however, sometimes we lose those for other competitors are putting their row units on our bars or parts of their row units. But we typically stick to the deer bar and deer solution. But when it comes to wanting to go head to head, we're not afraid to get in the field with anybody to show off our solution. Whether it be a high speed planter, just an electric drop planter, even as basic as our finger pickup planter, we'll go in the field, go head to head and take it all the way to yield. Because we have a lot of confidence and a lot of history in developing solutions in that area.

Doc, I think it's also important to realize that John Deere planters are not only unique to John Deere solutions when it gets to a customer's operation. So John Deere does offer customers the solution in being compatible with other OEMs. So if you do have another machine, our planters will be able to operate with those machines taking consideration. You just need to have the necessary requirements in terms of hardware. They'll activate the planter. But I think to get back to your point, there is no limits to John Deere planters working with opposition tractors.

I have, and I'm glad you mentioned because I know of an example of where a farmer was converted to green because of a plant and JDLink. So I was just curious, is that actually a strategy or is it again, it's just one of those things that I guess happens.

Yeah. And I think it also talks to the integration part of John Deere. And we've heard that this whole week where integration and data is very important and we strive towards creating data and giving customers the visibility of what they are currently doing, but also giving them access to operation center and creating jobs to make sure they've got the prescriptions and they can do the job a lot easier. And that's where integration comes in and making sure when you've got a John Deere machine with a John Deere plant, that integration is so much smoother. The two machines talk to each other and with JDLink and Operations center, you get the job done so much faster.

Yeah, we opened the conversation talking about production system and how we think of things in the job of planting. And when you think about if I'm running a green tractor with a green planter in the integration of those two, when you plug them up, they're aware of who each other are they the information flow from the machine, as we call it, from the road to the cab, cab to the cloud as you integrate. My operations center is much more seamless than it would be if. If you did not have a, say, a green tractor or if maybe you had a green tractor and not a green planter. So when you get into the John Deere ecosystem and take advantage of the building blocks of my operations center, the building blocks of the Starfire 7000 are the building blocks of the Gen 4 display. Those are foundational to making sure that when you do plug up, everything is ready to go. The experience the other day you and I talked a little bit about CAB experience and the comforts and creature comforts of lighting and foot pegs and some of that. I think it's the same thing. When you're thinking about getting in and operating, when you want to engage auto track, as an example, the buttons are in the same spot. You have a general idea how to set, set that up. You don't have to worry about the different ways of configuring it or what it, what it might be doing. It just works together. And so getting in the deer ecosystem tends to help all of these different jobs that you're going to do throughout the year feel common. And it's not relearning it every time you start a new job in the journey.

Yeah, and I think I, I can't say the brand, but obviously I think of a brand that really, our whole family has been pulled in for that simple reason. In terms of implementing a new tool using a new getting data, it's just seamless transition and implementation. So it makes a lot of sense.