Ertl 1:64 John Deere Round Baler

John Deere is the brand name of Deere & Company, an American corporation that manufactures agricultural, construction, and forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipment, and lawn care equipment. In 2019, it was listed as 87th in the Fortune 500 America's ranking and was ranked 329th in the global ranking. The company also provides financial services and other related activities.

Deere & Company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DE. The company's slogan is "Nothing Runs Like a Deere", and its logo is a leaping deer, with the words 'JOHN DEERE' under it. Various logos incorporating a leaping deer have been used by the company for over 155 years.

Deere & Company began when John Deere, born in Rutland, Vermont, United States on February 7, 1804, moved to Grand Detour, Illinois in 1836 to escape bankruptcy in Vermont. Already an established blacksmith, Deere opened a 1,378-square-foot (128 m2) shop in Grand Detour in 1837, which allowed him to serve as a general repairman in the village, as well as a manufacturer of tools such as pitchforks and shovels. Tools were just a start; the item that set him apart was the self-scouring steel plow, which was pioneered in 1837 when John Deere fashioned a Scottish steel saw blade into a plow. Prior to Deere's steel plow, most farmers used iron or wooden plows to which the rich Midwestern soil stuck, so they had to be cleaned frequently. The smooth-sided steel plow solved this problem, and greatly aided migration into the American Great Plains in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The traditional way of doing business was to make the product as and when it was ordered. This style was very slow, As Deere realized that this was not going to be a viable business model, he increased the rate of production by manufacturing plows before putting them up for sale; this allowed customers to not only see what they were buying beforehand, but also allowed his customers to purchase his products straight away. Word of his products began to spread quickly.

As of 2018, Deere & Company employed about 67,000 people worldwide, of which half are in the United States and Canada, and is the largest agriculture machinery company in the world. In August 2014, the company announced it was indefinitely laying off 600 of its workers at plants in Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas due to less demand for its products. Inside the United States, the company's primary locations are its administrative center in Moline, Illinois, and manufacturing factories in central and southeastern United States. As of 2016, the company experiments with an electric farm tractor.

The logo of the leaping deer has been used by this company for over 155 years. Over the years, the logo has had minor changes and pieces removed. Some of the older style logos have the deer leaping over a log. The company uses different logo colors for agricultural vs. construction products. The company's agricultural products are identifiable by a distinctive shade of green paint, with the inside border being yellow. While the construction products are identifiable by a shade of black with the deer being yellow, and the inside border also being yellow.

In September 2017, Deere & Company signed a definitive agreement to acquire Blue River Technology, which is based in Sunnyvale, California and is a leader in applying machine learning to agriculture. Blue River has designed and integrated computer vision and machine learning technology that will enable growers to reduce the use of herbicides by spraying only where weeds are present, optimizing the use of inputs in farming.

On August 29, 2019, it was announced that Samuel R. Allen will step down as CEO and president of John Deere. John May, president of the Worldwide Agriculture and Turf and Integrated Solutions divisions will replace him in November 2019.