Deere: Centuries of Farming Innovation

This episode is brought to you by:

Quartr. With Quartr, you can access conference calls, investor presentations, transcripts, and earnings reports – straight from your pocket. Quartr is 100% free and includes companies from 12 markets including the US, the UK, Canada, India, and all the Scandanavian countries. Quartr is available for both iOS and Android, so check out the app today.

Brex. Brex began as the first corporate card for startups and now offers a full financial stack built for scale. Get 10-20x higher credit limits, uncapped rewards, easy deposits and payments, and expense management all in one. Grow your business faster with Brex.

[00:03:04] - [First question] - What Matt does as a farmer and where he spends his time

[00:03:54] - How big the global crop production and agriculture industry is 

[00:05:48] - Key considerations in production efficiency with such a large market

[00:08:15] - John Deere’s role in the global agriculture industry

[00:08:58] - Deere’s business model and how they generate revenue

[00:10:14] - What farmers tend to buy and how distribution works

[00:12:06] - How a farmer traditionally thinks about their business

[00:13:18] - Some of the large machine purchases that a farmer needs

[00:14:11] - What a combine does and its role in crop production

[00:14:53] - The landscape and types of family farms 

[00:15:57] - Whether or not farmers can earn above industry returns through any cycle

[00:18:18] - The role Deere plays in controlling variable costs to improve returns

[00:20:38] - The things Matt’s most focused on as a farmer and how Deere optimize outcomes

[00:22:48] - Brand loyalty and mixing and matching machines from different brands

[00:24:55] - What precision agriculture actually means

[00:27:55] - Overview of a harvest and how Deere equipment interacts with it

[00:31:16] - Unit economics and how their recurring relationship generates profit

[00:34:01] - Interpreting data, who owns the data, and digital agriculture analytics

[00:35:55] - What enables Deere to generate such large margins as an industrial manufacturer

[00:40:35] - Is Deere a higher-priced product than its competitors?

[00:41:16] - Recent acquisitions and what it says about their growth

[00:43:17] - The John Deere API and potential third party integration 

[00:44:28] - Will farmers even be physically operating machinery in the future?

[00:46:35] - Lessons learned as a builder and an investor from John Deere’s story