John Deere Rolls Back DEI Measures After Backlash

A John Deere tractor is displayed at Belkorp Ag in Santa Rosa, Calif., on May 20, 2016. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Agricultural machinery maker Deere and Co. has dialed down what it calls its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) “mindset” after facing a pressure campaign on social media and beyond over some of its diversity measures.

The Moline, Illinois-based company, which does business as John Deere, said on July 16 that it will stop supporting social awareness events, review training materials to remove socially motivated messaging, and confirmed it doesn’t have any diversity hiring quotas.

In the statement, John Deere pledged to “no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals or events,” while promising it would be “auditing all company-mandated training materials and policies to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages” and “reaffirming within the business that the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.”

The company made no mention of any backlash to its DEI policies as motivation for the pivot, saying only that it was motivated to make the adjustments after “listening to feedback” from its customers and that meeting customer needs is a top priority.

However, the announcement was made about a week after Robby Starbuck, a filmmaker and 2022 Republican House candidate from Tennessee, launched a viral campaign on social media, accusing John Deere of having “gone woke” and being all-in on DEI.

Some of the DEI-related measures that Mr. Starbuck highlighted include encouraging employees to express their preferred pronouns and creating LGBT and race-based identity groups for employees to join.

Like a number of major American brands, John Deere embraced DEI policies in recent years, with its 2021 sustainability report showing it was working to embed diversity and inclusion deeply into its corporate culture by, for example, putting its staff through “progressive” education programs that included unconscious bias training.

“Using the right pronouns sets a tone of allyship,” reads an April 29, 2022, post on the company’s Facebook page. “Consider directly asking an individual their gender pronouns, and share yours. Be a Rainbow Ally. Be at Deere.”

The company’s 2020 sustainability report indicates that there were a number of Employee Resource Groups (ERG) that met for networking sessions and to provide support to one another. Among these, roughly 1,300 staff were part of the Rainbow ERG, which supported LGBT employees and allies. Some race-based groups included HOLA (for Hispanic/Latino employees), Asian Connection, and Black ERG, which partnered with the Rainbow group to draft a formal statement on “racial justice” for company leaders.

In its DEI-related pivot, John Deere said its resource groups will now be focused on professional development, networking, mentoring, and talent recruitment, rather than social justice or other aims.

At the same time, the company said it stands by its belief that a diverse workforce is one that is best poised to serve customer needs.

“We fundamentally believe that a diverse workforce enables us to best meet our customers’ needs and because of that we will continue to track and advance the diversity of our organization,” the company said.

Mr. Starbuck said his campaign wasn’t meant to destroy John Deere as a company, only to send a message and try to effect change through boycotts.

“My goal is to inform consumers about the values major companies are adopting so they can make choices about what they’re willing to support,” he wrote. “When we use our voices and wallets to vote our values, we can change the world and we can restore great American companies to a culture of sanity, meritocracy and culture war neutrality.”

Mr. Starbuck recently launched a similar campaign against Tractor Supply, which led to a boycott that prompted the company to back away from its DEI initiatives.

John Deere officials didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment and for clarification as to what types of DEI measures it intends to keep in place.