Nothing Runs Like a ‘Trusty' John Deere

The colors of green and yellow are unmistakable. You can see them in Afghanistan, Guatemala, China, Nigeria and even Central Park. They represent the best values of our country - sturdiness, trust, innovation. Most importantly, the green and yellow of John Deere may also just represent one of humankind's best chances for the future.

The story of John Deere parallels the story of our young country. In the early decades of the 19th century, American expansion across our continent had arrived in the Midwest. The prairie soil, rich, deep and thick, posed real problems for farmers using cast-iron plows designed for the light sandy soil of New England. Plowing these vast new prairies was an extraordinarily slow and labor-intensive job, so difficult that many early farmers considered returning home.

John Deere was an astute man. After some careful study, he became convinced that a plow with a highly polished and properly shaped moldboard and share would work well in this new soil. And like so many inventors to come, in 1837 Deere co-opted technology intended for other applications (steel from a broken saw blade) to produce a plow that would make Midwestern farms the breadbasket of the world.

Since its humble beginnings more than 173 years ago, John Deere has built its success by investing in research. The numbers of innovations that have come about by Deere engineers is astounding - and today farmers all over the world are improving the productivity of the land by employing GPS-guided tractors that are in many ways far more advanced than our aging space shuttles.

We all need companies like John Deere more than ever today. Not just for the jobs they provide, but for the vision to take on the immensely challenging problems that loom on the horizon. When Deere started his company to support farmers, the world population had just exceeded one billion. Today, our population is 6.8 billion. As we look forward to our children's world, the UN estimates that there will be approximately 9.2 billion humans by the year 2050.

We are already struggling to feed our world today, and the task is going to be significantly more difficult when we add another two and half billion mouths. New available land will be extremely limited, water will likely become an even more politicized resource, and sci-fi approaches like vertical farming still have a long way to go. So where are we going to find another three trillion meals every year using an existing resource base that is already stretched?

Thankfully, the current leaders of John Deere are not waiting for the crisis to hit before taking this problem seriously. Maybe that's just the farmers approach that seems so "last century" and yet quietly still helps puts food on the world's table day after day. Led by Dave Everitt, president of Deere's Agriculture and Turf Div., this very talented team is scouring the globe to find the innovations needed for a problem still decades away.

We are rightfully excited and proud of new companies that provide remarkable solutions to challenging problems, but let's also give thanks that there are great companies built on centuries of innovation that have the strength, wisdom and resources to take on the biggest problems of our times. I hope that 173 years from now we can count on Facebook and Google to provide answers to problems yet unimagined. Until then, we will rely on our trusty John Deere.

Geoffrey C. Orsak is Dean of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering. He can be reached at dean@lyle.smu.edu.