John Deere continues 189-year history of technological leaps

• Deere & Co. is developing autonomous farm equipment and 'superhuman sensing capability' to revolutionize agriculture.
• Deere's focus on technology has made it a top-performing stock, with its share price increasing more than six-fold since 2015.
• This push into high-tech farming continues the company's long history of innovation, which began with the first steel plow in 1837.

This story is part of the Iconic Brands series, a USA TODAY network project showcasing the companies and brands that helped shape the nation's identity, economy and culture. The series celebrates American ingenuity with a deeply reported examination of how brands intersect with history, community and everyday life in celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary. Find more athttps://crabstation.site/usa250/iconic-brands

Good farmers track a lot of indicators.

They know the price of corn and soybean futures. They know the season’s rain forecast. They know the president’s policy on visas for temporary agriculture workers. They know the impact of wars on fertilizer prices. They know the up-to-date costs of herbicide, fungicide, insecticide, seed, seed treatment, grain elevator fees and fuel.

And, of course, they know about the latest accelerometers.

For those who don’t know, accelerometers are vibration sensors. Like inertial measurement units, gyroscopes and microelectromechanical systems.

Farmers need to know about vibration sensors because the components are key to their industry’s future. Deere & Co. leaders, who have made investors swoon with their promise of building a fully autonomous farm, plan to one day use them in a self-driving combine.

Already, the Moline, Illinois, company has brought major innovations to the market over the past decade ― an autonomous tractor and sprayers that automatically detect and treat weeds in crops, among other high-tech products. But the combine presents a more complex challenge. Deere needs to build a machine that can see beyond tall corn, feel changes in the terrain and detect problems in the extraction of the crop.

And so, to reach the company’s goal, Deere’s leaders are working on better vibration sensors. And better sound sensors and vision systems ― “superhuman sensing capability,” said Jahmy Hindman, the company’s chief technology officer.

Investors believe Deere leaders can fulfill their promises and push farming into the future, just as employees have time and time again in the company’s 189-year history.

That investor confidence explains why Deere, an old, Midwestern industrial company, offers one of the hottest stocks on the market in an era dominated by microchips, software and consumer tech.

Since 2015, Deere’s share price has increased more than six-fold. That increase is about 2½ times as fast as the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index’s rise during the period.

The autonomous equipment does more than automatically plant and treat fields. The machines are part of the industry’s broader evolution into precision agriculture ― the practice of treating each foot of dirt and each plant exactly as it needs to be treated for maximum yield with minimum inputs.

The tech could save farmers money on chemicals and fertilizer and make agriculture more environmentally friendly.

“You can create a master gardener for every plant, to give that plant exactly what it needs and only what it needs to live its best life,” Hindman said. “That opportunity is going to exist for growers.”

A tractor company that sells subscriptions

Deere also will have an opportunity to make a lot more money.

The company sells subscriptions to the software that powers its automated sprayer, See & Spray. The machine-learning system detects weeds on plants and sprays herbicides only where necessary.

Company executives tell farmers that subscriptions save money. Farmers pay Deere based on how much they use See & Spray, which allows them to cut herbicide use by 50% to 70%, Hindman estimates.

To investors, company executives say the subscription service will make Deere a more consistent company. Since its inception, Deere has been vulnerable to the cycles of the agriculture market. When commodity prices increase, farmers buy new tractors, sprayers and combines. When prices drop, they save their money.

With subscriptions, Deere executives believe they can increase revenue even during the bad times. When farmers are most vulnerable, the company’s leaders say, they will be especially interested in Deere’s services that cut costs on chemicals, fertilizer and other inputs.

The good times will be better than they used to be, executives say. The bad times won’t be as bad.

Deere’s financial reports reflect how valuable the company’s latest tech has been. In 2023, led by its large ag equipment segment, the company recorded a record $10.2 billion profit.

Deere hasn’t performed as well during the current ag downturn. But even while hitting what they expect to be the trough of the cycle in 2026, executives forecast a profit of about $4.8 billion. The company would still be about three times more profitable than it was during the bottom of the previous downturn a decade earlier.

“We’re really just getting started with what technology can do for agriculture,” said Deanna Kovar, president of the company’s agriculture and turf division. “… Ten years from now we will be so much further in helping farmers be more precise, be more productive and make better decisions that allow them to have generational opportunities for the future of agriculture.”

Innovations started with a broken saw

Deere began in 1837 when founder and namesake John Deere, a blacksmith, sold farmers a hot, new innovation: a steel plow made from a broken steel sawblade.

Farmers had previously used a plow made of cast iron. The sticky, Midwestern soil clung to the iron. Farmers had to stop every couple of feet to knock the dirt off.

But the dirt didn’t stick to steel, and Deere’s dynasty began.

“I don’t think people understand just how progressive and forward-thinking of a company John Deere is,” said Neil Dahlstrom, the company’s archivist. “It’s very easy to say, ‘Oh ― ag. Construction. It’s people playing with big toys. They’re moving dirt. They’re moving gravel. It’s not incredibly sophisticated.'

"I think the opposite is true. It’s such an incredibly sophisticated business. I think that’s undervalued.”

Company leaders have continually kept pace with technological advancements, introducing products that made farming more efficient. About the only thing that has remained constant is the company's leaping deer logo, registered as a trademark 150 years ago. And even it has gotten sleeker over time.

In their ongoing quest to revolutionize agriculture, Deere leaders brought newspaper reporters to a demonstration farm in the 1910s, showing them the peculiar concept of a farm without horses, Dahlstrom said. Soon after, in 1918, the company introduced its first gas-powered tractor to the market.

In the early 1950s, as the industry consolidated and farms grew, company leaders rented a butcher shop, covered the walls in brown paper and charged a team of engineers with figuring out how to build higher-horsepower tractors.

Executives proudly advertised their progress seven years later, flying about 6,000 dealers, bankers and loyal customers to Dallas for an event they called Deere Day. They showed off the “New Generation of Power,” a product line of bigger ag and construction equipment. They fed the crowd barbecue, shot off fireworks and five months later celebrated when Forbes editors put CEO Bill Hewitt on the magazine's cover. By 1963, Deere was the world’s largest ag and construction equipment manufacturer.

The company struggled during the farm crisis of the 1980s, when commodity prices sank and over-leveraged farmers filed for bankruptcy. Employees stopped making tractors, and Deere leaders kept the business afloat by building recreational vehicle chassis. In 1987, the company suffered its first operating loss since the Great Depression.

But as the farm crisis ebbed, Deere executives invested in factory upgrades and encouraged innovation.

In 1993, CEO Hans Becherer scheduled a 30-minute meeting with Terry Pickett, one of the company’s engineers. Pickett pitched Becherer on the potential of GPS technology to change agriculture. Becherer was so excited about the idea that the meeting stretched for two hours.

The company formed a precision farming group after the meeting. The group eventually developed a GPS system that could operate on Deere equipment, which eventually led to AutoTrac, the system that effectively ended farmers’ need to steer a machine while in the cab.

The company has continued to gradually improve its precision farming tech since, including with some key investments.

In 2017, Deere paid $305 million to acquire Blue River Technology, the company that created the See & Spray vision system that allows machines to detect and spray weeds. Deere has also since bought Bear Flag Robotics and GUSS Automation, investments that executives hope will improve Deere’s ability to automate more equipment.

The company introduced its first autonomous tractor in 2022, and a year later CEO John May was the keynote speaker at the annual Consumer Electronics Show ― a stamp of approval from leaders in the tech industry that would have been unheard of in past decades.

“You wouldn’t think a farm company is on the edge of autonomy or robots,” Dahlstrom said.

Fielding data center computing power

Deere’s business strategy does have its detractors.

A satirical April 2025 post on AgTalk, a farmer forum, advertised new subscriptions from the company, including monthly fees of $30 for air conditioning in the cab and $100 for “full engine power.”

Hindman said Deere encountered “nearly 100% universal aversion” to the See & Spray subscription when the company rolled it out three years ago. But he said many customers have come around to the concept.

The company adjusted the price of a subscription in 2024, offering a pay-as-you-go rate. Farmers pay a lower upfront cost for the subscription than they used to and then pay a fee based on the number of acres or hours in which they use See & Spray. Hindman said the model helps Deere show customers that the product is worth their money, given how much they can save on herbicide.

“We’ve both got skin in the game,” Hindman said. “If it doesn’t work for you, you don’t renew the license. That’s on us. We’ve got to make sure you’re recognizing value with that subscription. And if not, we’ve got to modify the product.”

Investors are waiting to see other advancements from Deere. See & Spray, for example, could expand to the other treatments ― fungicides and pesticides. Spotting a fungus or an insect is more challenging than locating a weed, and the company needs some technical improvements to be able to automatically eliminate those problems in the field.

The price of data storage has been a major obstacle. Processing images requires a lot of data, and storing that data is expensive. But the function should become more affordable. The most advanced computer chips, the kinds only in AI data centers now, will eventually make their way to Deere machines.

“I think we’ll have sufficient infrastructure to pull that off,” Hindman said.

Company officials also believe artificial intelligence systems will be able to analyze farmers’ data faster in the future. The company’s equipment collects and stores data about farms in cloud-based software, giving customers a range of facts about their fields, from moisture levels to fertilizer application amounts to yield rates.

Farmers currently may need the assistance of an agronomist to analyze the data and use it for future planting strategies. But with artificial intelligence advancements, executives believe, Deere’s software should be able to offer that same analysis and answer customers’ questions.

To get to that point, Deere and other industry leaders still need to solve some fundamental challenges. Most importantly, they need to get better data out of the soil, said Bruce Erickson, a digital agriculture professor at Purdue.

For years, companies have failed to solve the problem of what they call “variable rate technology” ― that is, the ability to precisely determine the right amount of seed, fertilizer and other material in every part of a field. Currently, Erickson said, farmers make decisions based on soil samples drawn every 2½ acres. But there is a lot of variety in the acres between those samples.

“It just really hasn’t been cost effective to do all the sampling and the sending to make it work,” Erickson said.

One company tried to solve the problem by analyzing the color of plants as they emerge ― but by that point, he said, any changes a farmer could make would be too late. Another company tried to create more specific sampling by measuring electrical connectivity in the soil, but Erickson said that solution didn’t really take, either.

Some companies provide detailed, overhead maps of farms that show how soil content is different, based on the color of the field. But a field is a biological system, always changing, Erickson said. Plus, some years are wetter than others ―throwing off last year’s analysis.

“How in the dickens am I supposed to respond to that?” he said. “Should there be more seeds? Less seeds? More fertilizer? Less fertilizer?”

Hindman said Deere is working on soil sensors. So is Jorge Heraud, the co-founder of Blue River Technologies, the See & Spray maker that Deere bought nine years ago. Heraud stayed with Deere until 2024, and last year he became CEO of TerraBlaster, a California startup that uses laser technology to analyze soil.

“This is the No. 1 opportunity in agtech right now,” Heraud told AgFunderNews.

Deere also still needs to prove its subscription model works as a business plan. In 2022, CEO John May told the Wall Street Journal that about 10% of Deere’s revenue would come from subscription revenue by the end of the decade. That would come out to about $4 billion to $6 billion a year, based on the company’s recent performance.

However, the company has yet to disclose its subscription revenue in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Hindman said he was unclear about what percentage of owners of Deere machines are paying for subscriptions. But he said annual renewals are “buoyant.”

“We’ve got a big target out there,” he said, “that we intend on hitting.”

How the list was chosen

The Iconic Brands 50 identifies American companies that most profoundly shaped the nation’s identity, economy and culture. Selection emphasized historical significance, industry-building innovation, measurable economic influence and lasting cultural impact. Brands were chosen for transforming daily life or becoming enduring symbols of American values. Long-term relevance and sustained national influence carried greater weight than short-term financial performance or recent popularity.

Tyler Jett is an investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at [email protected], 515-284-8215, or on X at @LetsJett. He also accepts encrypted messages at [email protected].