John Deere employees get 'In Tune with Agriculture'

When John Deere Waterloo Works decided to provide an agriculture awareness course for its employees, the company contacted Iowa State University Extension.

“We want our employees to have a clearer understanding of agriculture, the issues and trends our customers face in their business, and we want our customers to be amazed at how much our employees know about agriculture,” said Linda Hibben, manager of training and development for John Deere Waterloo Works. “John Deere and Extension, through a team formed to develop training, have built on each other’s ideas and come to solutions that neither entity could have done alone.”

As a result, In Tune with Agriculture will provide timely, need-specific instruction for a targeted audience.

Black Hawk County farmer Earl Youngblut, right, and his family are the typical North American farm family and John Deere customer that will be featured as a case study for In Tune with Agriculture, that ISU Extension is creating for John Deere Waterloo Works.

Every employee of John Deere Waterloo Works will attend the first part of the course -- John Deere 101, Issues and Trends in North American Agriculture -- during the 2002 fiscal year, beginning in November 2001. ISU Extension field specialists and county extension education directors, in teams of two, will come to Waterloo to teach the eight-hour course. John Deere employees will attend, 20 to 25 at a time, during a one-day work shift with a cross-section of departments represented in each class.

John Deere 101 covers the history of agriculture from early mechanization to the present and explains how agricultural changes created today’s system and laid the foundation for the future. A case study will illustrate what a farm is, how agriculture is organized and changing and the consequences of those changes. Employees will try to understand how John Deere fits into that scenario.

“John Deere saw a need for this education because the company looked to the future when many long-time employees with farm backgrounds would be retiring. The company saw new employees coming with little or no agricultural experience,” said Paul Brown, Northeast Area Extension education director and Extension’s primary contact for the project.

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• Last update: September 2001