 Well good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us. You know this our guest today is an exceptional case but he's not completely atypical. So many fantastic Boilermaker success stories. I get the privilege these days of meeting a lot of people who came here and through their own hard work and the excellence of this place launched their careers and Sam Allen I think would count himself one of those grew up in a military family and spent a lot of time as I did as a kid in the South and then came to Kokomo, Indiana and on to Purdue graduating in industrial management and began a career at John Deere that took him straight to the top. Along the way he maintained contact here at Purdue and then in life with Marsha his high school sweetheart and so there's is a great story on the personal side too but the John Deere company known to us all so squarely in the in the heritage of what we are as a school when you think of our original land-grant assignment agriculture and the mechanical arts and they come together in a with complete excellence in the in the great company the world knows as John Deere we're just incredibly proud that one of our grads has risen to leadership there he's been a citizen in every respect he's also just winding up several years as leader of the council on competitiveness which is perhaps the best organization of business and and academic leaders working on those problems that get in the way of America's being as successful economically and as competitive in the world as we want to be so he serves in multiple capacities and but he's been gracious enough to come back and spend a day with us here at Purdue and Sam Allen thank you for all you've done all the all the reflected the luster you brought to our University and we appreciate having you here today and looking forward to your comments and the questions I hope you'll prepare yourselves with for the bulk of our hour welcome thank you well good afternoon and it is a pleasure to be back Marcia who's with me my wife and I don't get to get back very often so it you know there's a double objective here one is the opportunity to participate in something like this but the second objective is also just to get back on campus which is a good thing for us as President Daniels indicated I've started my career John Deere right out of here I graduated from here of May of 75 and on to June I started working for the company so I've got 39 years good years with company so far and had the good benefit to be in all the divisions of the company which I think is definitely been a positive in this role that I now get to be the chairman's CEO of the company interestingly enough the company's a hundred and seventy seven years old so I think thirty two years older than Purdue University and I think President Daniels is the 12th president and I'm only the ninth chairman CEO in that hundred and seventy seven-year history so it is a company that has a lot of history to it for those of you that might not know John Deere there really was a gentleman by the name of John Deere he developed a self-scouring plow and started this company today we're about a 36 billion dollar company about 64,000 employees our largest business which is what we're probably best known for is agricultural equipment we're number one in the world in ag equipment but we also have a fairly large construction equipment division we're number two in US and Canada behind Caterpillar our third largest business would be our forestry business and we're number one in the world in forestry with over half of the market and then we also are a manufacturer of turf equipment premium turf equipment both for golf and for home and maintenance and then the fifth leg of our business this is where you've got John Deere financial which is a credit company with a 40 billion dollar loan portfolio that does business in roughly 40 of the 140 countries that we operate in and we have about 27 countries that we manufacture or have operations in so that's a little bit about the company what I thought I would further add is the theme that was talked about in 2010 we said about refocusing the company based on some of the macroeconomic trends going on which in particular was about population growth and dietary changes and at the time when we started there was about seven billion people it's by seven point two billion on the earth today by 2050 it will be nine point four nine point six billion by the end of the century probably 10 billion and that 30% population growth plus the dietary changes associated with a world economically prospering and being able to eat better specifically going as they go from a dollar two dollars a day to five to eight dollars a day going from just eating cereal grains to eating protein in the form of chicken, beef whatever it may be that's going to require as a result a doubling of food output so the population growth adds to it but it's the fact that a lot of people don't appreciate but it takes four to seven times the calorie input of grain to get one calorie output of protein between chicken and beef and that's what's going to cause the doubling we seen that this last decade in particular in China where over the year over the decade with 300 people million people moving into the middle class China is the number one consumer of pork in the world and that's what's really driven some of the need for grain production and as a result of that looking at that we feel strongly that both construction equipment but in particular ag equipment and what we call ag equipment solutions is a tremendous opportunity for John Deere because there's only about 17% more arable land in the world and we've got a double food output and that's means that while we will bring additional land into production most of this has to come from ramping up the amount of yield growth on each existing acre and that takes precision agriculture and high production agriculture and we believe no one's better prepared to enable that with the farmers than John Deere and so we've put a lot of focus a lot rd in it I'm proud to say that we had a good year in 2010 but 2011 then was all-time record best year in the history of the company 2012 exceeded that 2013 exceeded that in 2014 will be the second best year slightly behind 2013 so it's a really great opportunity to be a part of John Deere right now and we feel we have a strong strong opportunity to help the world by serving those that are linked to the land those that enable human flourishing which are the farmers of the world and that's what we're really focused on so it's good to be here and I look forward to our discussion well it's is noble omission as as any community and that's what company is can take on and and obviously it's very close to one that Purdue will always remain active in and we appreciate the chance for partnerships with your company so I'll ask the first two or three questions why you summon the courage to come some of you to come to Mike's which are somewhere there and I'm tempted to start with golf I left out of the introduction that that young man from Kokomo played his way on to the Purdue campus he was an Evans scholar many many of you will know some of those these are young men and women who caddy and her win win earned scholarships to go to schools their choice and then played for the Purdue golf team so those of you who want tips you'll be available in the lobby after but I would not be a good one but let me let me start where you were had just taken us and ask you when you think about the goal feeding nine to ten billion people what are the biggest barriers are they technological is it are they the limits to arable land is it regulatory and government policies that could impede it's probably these in some mix but when dear thinks about them what what are the hurdles most important hurdles that need to or problems that need to be worked out you know in 2009 we were a part of a group that started what's called the global harvest initiative and that was between NGOs parts of the government as well as private enterprise really saying we need to bring focus back to agricultural research because we'd really have let that slip and while we've continued to see yield increases year over year the rate of increase has slowed down from a number of years ago and it's going to have to increase again to feed the world there is quite a bit more arable land or we would estimate roughly there's 17% more arable land in the world that could come into production that wouldn't be enough for the double output so you still have to definitely increase yields likewise you have to be able to do it in a sustainable fashion and probably near term one of the biggest impediments is water there's approximately 67% of the world's fresh water is used by agriculture it's not feasible to say well let's not just irrigate crops it's about 17 18% of the crop land that's irrigated it produces over 40% of the crop output so water is in a critical enabler of increasing yields though it has to be done more and more efficiently and I would say in the near term water is going to be one of the biggest challenges it already is in some of the places in the US but you know China is very very close to being out of water except especially water that's not contaminated and so in the case of China and India it's not only that they have very little groundwater left it's that you know they talk about it now being dirty water and it's not water that you would even want to put on a crop India and most people don't appreciate it but at the rate of consumption that they it's forecasted that within 15 years they could be out of water other than the monsoons and all that but clearly wouldn't have an additional water China has some of the same issue I think everybody's read about some of the big canals that they're bringing in from the south trying to bring you up to the Beijing area in order to enable additional water for both irrigation and for commercial development but that probably is in at least in my opinion would be the near-term biggest challenge the second part is bringing to parts of the world really rich information on agronomic decision-making so many of the places where we operate you'll see that people do not really understand agronomics and another India again as a prime example of this where the government used to pay farmers subsidized fee for fertilizer put on the crops but they never told them the best way to use it and so what happens is they've over fertilized the land to the point that it's not productive anymore and they're having to move back off of that so near-term for me in my mind it would be definitely water some people believe it's going to be hard to get the yield improvements that we're talking about personally I don't think that's the case I'm very much of an optimist in that area I think we'll see continued growth in yields both from genetics but in particular as agriculture is moving more and more to data-driven agriculture with all the information coming on off the farm field the opportunity to use that information to make better agronomic decisions and grow the yields I think without a doubt will allow us to meet the near-term challenges there so over the long term I think we'll get there but I think we're going to have some hiccups along the way in particular with things like water yeah no I mean it isn't the importance of water and the possible shortages and even limited to the our need to feed the world a lot of conflicts over history have been fought over water and there are people who believe there could be a next great conflict somewhere could start out of the desperation of somebody who's running out yeah yeah especially you know I even hear it it could be in this country between Colorado and California you know there you're seeing a lot of a lot of concern in both areas and a lot of question as to who really has the rights to the water and what should the decisions be made but in particular you know I think in all of those the challenge and it's not easy to get around this but the places that are efficient with water are places where water has a price and as long as one allows somebody to extract it from the ground for free you're not in Senate to practice really good water may serve it right obviously ours is a university which is deeply involved in in research and new trying to develop new technologies in the areas you just talked about plant genetics is a great example currently but tantalize us a little bit what what what new technologies might we see from John Deere or from related industries and companies in the year years ahead that are gonna get us to this I know Dean Ackridge keeps telling me won't be long before we see a driverless tractor and what else you guys got in the skunk works well we've had driverless tractors now for quite some time and the biggest challenge with the driverless tractor is not being able to have it go down the field but it's being able to detect is that a stone a rabbit or a small person and that that really at this point time is the biggest that worked out before you turn them loose that yeah yeah yeah we'll be seen otherwise just part of the issue but we'll probably first see things like that actually in more controlled environments like vineyards for example where they can run at night and all that but we I take us down a couple different paths certainly we're still going to have equipment getting smarter and smarter all our equipment today goes out with a telematic solution so for example the head of tractor engineering can sit in his office and he can ping a tractor operating in Germany and see you know is what's the hours on the tractor is the engine running properly a number of different things like that so that there's data like that that's being enabled we're quickly optimizing the machine itself so it's self-adjusting etc the the area that we're working on big time now is really making what the the tractor for example pulls smart and it's really taken over the tractor so that you know for example on a planter that you will be able to plant individually each row but then you will also the planter will be able to tell the tractor to speed up or slow down based upon its ability to lay that perfect seed in the ground because number one impact on yield is being able to get the right spacing and right depth on on that for example corn seed that that's certainly coming in there we already are working on systems where the combines going down the field harvesting and you've got tractors with grain wagons and today that the combine will send out a signal and the tractor operator will let go of the steering wheel and the combine takes over and brings the tractor with the green cart right up next to the combine as it's still going through the field and then non loading auger unloads it and then once it's full the moment the tractor operator brings turns the steering wheel they break the connection and they take it off the next step you can vision of that very quickly as you've got six combines and 12 tractors and grain carts in the field and as the combines going down all six of them going down the field you're measuring how quickly the the grain bin is filling up and based on that real time you're you're optimizing which tractor grain cart goes to which combine so they never have to stop to get the yield up those are the type of things that you can do on on them what I'll call the mechanical side of the system but probably without a doubt the biggest area of opportunity for us is and what we call gender farm site which is our ability to take all this information that we're collecting whether it be from the planter whether it be from the combine combined with the information we get on soil chemistry everything else we take it up into the cloud what we myjohndeer.com our cloud and allow then farmers working with their agronomists to look at that to further optimize the following year okay what is it we want to do different to increase the yield and then we'll take that information back and we'll we'll then set a prescription that will then go ahead and then we're getting to the point that we're doing it by individual row same thing with the sprayers and everything and an example of this that just shows the power earlier this year I was in Australia Australia has very little water and it's a big issue and this is a large farmer using our equipment using our soil moisture probe and they had through two years of data had discovered that okay if we get past this level of ground moisture no amount of rain is going to help us anymore and we want to go from now putting fertilizers on to conserving costs because no matter how much fertilizer we put on the yield is not going to go up and so you normally think of this big data and bringing it in to increase yield in their case it's not about increasing yield it was also reducing cost so they kept margins up that's what's happening and it's going to happen more and more spectacular so I'll give I'll ask one more and that I hope will while it's being answered somebody will step forward and ask better questions than I am talk to us we will have some business students here as well following your direct footsteps talk to us about the the nature and the origins and the power of the John Deere brand when people measure these across all categories of business John Deere is always up there in the in the top rank and recognized universally in this country and over most of the world now and it's a big advantage and you've got to be in keeping you number one it's a lot it's about a lot more than a cool color and a and somebody's catchy slogans you have to build that over time and maintain it what how do you guys think about the brand and what do you do to keep it so strong well certainly what we talk about our opportunity through the future is to continue to extend and extend the brand globally in places like here the brand is very very deep a lot of that really comes from people that ran the company years and years ago I'll never forget I was in Arkansas visiting a dealer and he talked about his great-grandfather who during the depression was a John Deere dealer and John Deere went ahead and said you don't have to pay until you get the money back and the guy broke down in tears as he's talking about that and you know there were times like that in our history that have really created impressions deep impressions and deep loyalties don't you still have a forbearance fund that you set up that enables today's dealers to try to help folks who are in a tough well what we what we do is through our gender financial our credit company you know one of the things that we're always looking at that the finance company is there to enable the sale of equipment and to support the dealer so we what we will do is we'll work with the dealer to keep them solving way more than any normal financial entity would but that reputation over a long period of time people will come up to me and talk about you know their their Johnny Popper tractor or something of that nature that that certainly has created part of the brand loyalty inside the US I think a equally important part has been you know the values of the company and we've always been a company that's been very very high on integrity and I think that that further supports it and then as we move around the world you know we work hard to develop that same reputation what we found it's easier is when we're going around the world whether it be Russia whether it be China or South America it the large equipment big tractors big combines John Deere is pretty well known by any farmer and the loyalty is there but as we've gone into places like India where the average tractors a 36 horse power tractor and and that's all you know we've had to work hard on building our brand there but without a doubt every employee understands that you know the brand if we ever did something that where we failed to live up to our value proposition that the cost would be astronomical to us in our brand yeah it takes decades maybe to build a great reputation you can lose it pretty fast if you don't yeah I think we've seen that a few times well when you made it into the title of a country song a few years ago I knew you'd really arrived you know when Billy Bob painted Carlene's name on the water tower and John Deere green I figured somebody should get a raise for that you know people have asked us you know do you pay somebody for those songs I said no most time we don't even know they're doing it and the same thing some of the actors like some or musicians like Kid Rock you know wearing John Deere caps I'm not sure I really wanted to put it but we're no we don't pay anybody they just do that on their own so let's let's we got we'll start over on our left please hello my name is Chris Molina and I'm a senior out of Cranard I have a majoring in management and I actually finished up through my third internship this past summer with John Deere doing supply management and I was fortunate enough to accept an offer for full time starting next summer so I'm very excited about that so granted that I know a little bit about John Deere and having a goal targeted at 2015 and having it be such a big goal can you talk a little bit about the John Deere foundation and how that's helping John Deere attain that goal because I don't think many people know about the John Deere foundation yeah sure so our foundation like every company normally establishes a foundation to provide money to help the whatever they believe or their causes in our case we're up to about 20 million a year that we give and the big focus we have is we really divide it in a couple different areas one is on focus on world hunger and in particularly partnering with small-track family farmers and working to help them increase their yield and we've got great examples in sub-Saharan Africa and India we're working with them you take a farmer that may make $800 a year and by working with them on this you can get up to two three four thousand dollars a year it's huge change for them so that's one big focus then the second big focus is really supporting the communities in which we operate because we we do believe strongly that you're in the communities and you need to be able to give back as well so those would be two of the real big areas in the foundation and then the part that we add to that is that we really encourage volunteerism and so what we then try to in fact we pay we give paid time off and we provide through the foundation if you work for a charity for 40 hours above and beyond what you were we'll give a thousand dollars to that charity for every 40 hours and what that does for us is it also then creates employee development because we believe volunteerism is one of the ways you can further develop employees and so that's that's a little bit of the foundation work right hello my name is Ryan Musselman I'm a grad student in agriculture economics and I had an internship this summer as well and accepted a full-time offer so I'm there's a trend here I'm interested on the more personal side as far as working for the company and just business in general what is something that separated yourself or where you became distinguishable distinguishable against your peers to be successful in the position that you are in it's always risky when you talk about yourself you know it what I would say is through my career I was fortunate to be given a lot of opportunities and I looked at them as opportunities as opposed to as risk so when I first started with the company people said you know you don't want to get out of the ag division for example because the ag division was the biggest piece of the company well I was in the turf division for a while I was been in the construction forestry division a couple different times you know so when you so part of it was being willing to take on these opportunities which as a result of that I think it caused me to I didn't think I know it did it caused me to broaden myself a lot more and think a lot broader and be much more adaptable as we move progressed forward the second thing is demonstrating the ability to achieve results both how you achieve them but then you you've got to achieve them and probably two-thirds of the way through my career there there are a couple times where I've given very very important assignments for example building a new engine factory in Mexico where a lot of people thought it was the risk of doing that was much higher than any potential reward but we were able to bring it in and on time and on cost and it's still one of you know our best facilities now and when you do those things and you bring the people together you get recognized for that and as a result of that then you get another opportunity but you got to take the opportunity so many times I see people that they when they look at the opportunity they're looking at the risk associated with the opportunity and so a lot of times really good people that could move a long way limit themselves because they're not willing to to go ahead and and jump in the deep end of the pool so to speak and take on that risk that was those were probably really important plus a very supportive wife that allowed us to move a lot of times when it wasn't easy to move with young kids and everything those were the things that end up being real important and in deer it's every company has their own culture and deers culture it's not about your position you got to be able to work with people in a collegial fashion and if you're not able to to generate results without having people work directly for you I think you end up having a harder time moving ahead so clearly getting the results but it's also how you get the results and then not turning down opportunities all right so I'm going to break I'm going to break the cycle I actually spent summer in turning at NASA my name is a team group to we did a design design build fly of a UAV to just gather agricultural data over large a couple acres of crops is John you're looking into that into UAV research you I think you'd be really disappointed if I didn't say yes we've had we've had our own little aircraft people given different examples of aircraft going around fields we don't tend at least at this point time to get into the business of we would partner with people in terms of getting into whatever type of whether it be small helicopters or balloons whatever it may be small airplanes to do some of the visuals for the field what we really want to do is we want to be the the through my John deer dot com we want to be the place where all that information then resides that farmers and agronomists and everybody can work on that to then decide okay what do we what do we do different as a result of having this information it's certainly you know it agriculture right now is moving through a lot of growth again I think that's been enabled by the fact that we've had $7 corn for a while and when there's a lot of money being made that's when it drives a pull for innovation and so we whether it be in that area whether it be in compaction and all the issues with compaction whether it be with the seed companies you've just got a lot of things coming and it's not a question of whether they all will help it's they all will it's just a question of which ones will be the major drivers of yield growth versus the minor hello my name is Ryan Murphy I'm a graduate student in food science here at Purdue my question is related to the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that yet to reach their agricultural potential you could say how do you think these countries will can best progress towards this potential in terms of what needs to be prioritized regarding government reforms technological advancement producer education etc and how do you think John Deere can help reach this so the number one impediment in any of these areas the number one and number two and it can be debated on which whether you're talking sub-Saharan Africa whether you're talking Russia some of the CIS one of them is always the political system and the leadership and the second one is infrastructure and you know it's one thing to grow it but normally you're not growing it next to a port or next to where it's consumed so you need to either roads rail canals whatever you need to have a way to get it to the port in all cases both of those aren't existing right now normally good infrastructure is driven by good leadership governmental leadership so I probably put them in the order of good leadership first and in the meantime it gets to be a little hard we what we do do is we we try to go into some of the areas in countries where we feel we can operate in so Kenya for example Tanzania I was last year I was in Tanzania and South Africa for example and you know you have opportunities there with both small farmers and big farmers to help bring them along much more quickly but they become pockets it's not you can't do it country-wide but at least you can get it in areas I think that's probably what you'll see happen in some of those markets is you'll you can work on bringing up the mass but to really move agriculture what will happen is you'll end up with an area that because of local leadership that the area the farmers in that area have really progressed significantly and the country doesn't prevent that from happening and then you can again add on to from that when we were in Tanzania we're with a farmer that in the middle of nowhere and he had 1200 hectares of land and was grown about seven different crops and sending tulip bulbs up to Holland and all kinds of other things and had gotten pretty sophisticated that can happen and you know the good news about agriculture it's not done in the big cities and most of the corruption is in the big cities so those type of things can happen from that standpoint but I you know it's not going to be a steady path in my opinion it's going to be one step forward a half step back two steps forward a step back it's it's going to be slow because of all these other impediments and you know what we watch for is when do we think a country is starting to change from a leadership standpoint where they're getting more progressive because the moment that happens agriculture just like here a long time ago agriculture is going to be one of the first things that develops fully thank you yes thank you right over here hello hi my name is Jesse Peters I'm currently student at Ivy Tech trying to work my way back into Purdue I'd like to study agronomy become an agronomist and one of my reasons is the reason you're here today you know I see our our cities expanding and our farmland getting smaller and I look at my three young boys and think you know I'd like to see make sure they go to bed full every night and that their children and grandchildren good bed full every night we rock we operate a small farm on Southside Lafayette and we have a 1954 John Deere 40 a 55 70 and a 1959 630 great machines but anyway how can the small farmer and small farm become involved maybe with John Deere in this research and become involved in assisting with the increase of crop yields in the future yeah that's it's always a challenge specifically in the US you know I as I mentioned in some of these developing areas of the world we do it more from a foundation standpoint more from the idea of help helping people that subsistence farmers move up a little bit from that standpoint here you know there's the ag extension offices and things like that that can help but you know it I really don't have a great answer for you on that certainly our dealers end up being a a contact point around they obviously also focus a lot on the large farmers as opposed to the small farmers but a lot of them are built bringing in agronomists into their organizations to help with the different farmers etc the I think the challenge for the small farmer that you were just eluding to is if the small farmer a lot of times has older equipment and the older equipment is not the equipment that from a technology standpoint has been information enabled through telematics and a lot of what we're talking about in the future is going to require those telematic type solutions to port the information back up but that's you know when we have $5 $7 corn small farmers can still make it you know if we go through an extended period like we are right now of three and a half dollar corn that makes it much more difficult because scale is certainly a driver of this business thank you Jesse be we're looking forward to seeing you back here at Purdue hello my name is Corey Harris I am a senior in agriculture economics and political science you spoke a little bit earlier about the very cool things that you guys are doing with a lot of the big data that you're that you're getting from farmers but I also know there's a lot of contention in the industry about the ownership of that data and the privacy and how farmers can protect the privacy with that data can you speak a little bit about your view on that yeah we're very proud of how we went into this and early on we were one of in fact may have been even the first but we said early on that the data is the farmers data it's not the agronomist data it's not the C companies data everything coming off that machine is belongs to the farmer we also said even for ourselves to use it we have to get the farmer to sign off and to allow us to use it now what we try to do is aggregate the data up we're not wanting to look at specific farmers but we want to be able to look at a lot of different farmers to see okay how do we make that tractor better how do we make that combine better what what are we seeing in terms of stresses and strains on it but then we go out and it resides in the cloud my John Deere.com and that farmer will will allow that farmer to hook up whoever they want but they have to give permission and that's where we've been a little different some tried to come into the market and say the data was was theirs and they didn't want to give it back to the farmer but we have from day one said no it's the farmers data and we're going to ask their permission if we can use it and then if they don't give us the permission we won't use it and we think because of our brand because of our reputation that from that standpoint we would argue they can trust us because we've you know we have over 177 years have maintained that commitment to integrity and when we say we're not going to do something we don't do it thank you okay my name is Adam Farmer actually quite funny for a vent like this actually have that last name anyways I'm a freshman here so I feel kind of out of place I don't think there are many of us here and actually I'd like to digress back to the point of like the water and like the actual food because I'm actually like a health and human science major and that's what brought my interest here is like the health and human sciences part like the food and like the quality and I'm really curious I have about three questions you must be my dancer I'll ask one at a time okay anyways I'm ahead of the whole freshman glad okay but like the first question I'd like to ask is I remember you talking I'd like to digress back to the food and water because I remember you talking about like the water like running low and I'm curious what would what are you gonna what are you planning on doing that like do you have any idea what you're gonna do about that like I'm curious about this yeah so what what is I should have probably mentioned that I didn't even though agriculture uses 67% of the world's fresh water that's not a commensurate amount would not be used for example in the US what what really drives that water uses or places like India where they just flood irrigate they don't level the land and all of that but what we're gonna end up having to do is you have to get more and more efficient which ends up being whether it be mechanical pivot irrigation systems whether we were actually for a while in the drip irrigation drip tape business which is about as efficient as it gets but we couldn't find a way to really make that work for row crop but it's gonna be a combination of that the best example I can give you this is I think it was oh nine when I was there was either oh nine or oh ten I was in Israel and they've had ace in a decade and a half they've had a seven fold increase in crop output and they've cut water consumption by 50% and now most of what they grow are more fruits vegetables things like that and that's why drip irrigation works for them but what happened there is the the Israeli farmer owns the land the government owns the water underneath the land and so they they mandated it and raised the price so they may and then they provided subsidies to move to drip irrigation in a lot of these places and as a result they cut the the water usage tremendously so I you know there will be places where they'll do that the other thing you'll see or I was earlier a year ago I was in West Texas which also has huge water issues they end up changing crop rotations based on what crops consume less water and until they they know they've got more water back in in the pond or whatever so I you're gonna see I you'll see a lot of that go back to what we just mentioned about agriculture in general monetizing either the cost or the opportunity for water is what will drive the innovation that allows you know water usage to fully meet the needs and and not end up being not have us run out of it at any point in time okay so you think this channel will continue like throughout the rest of the world already think I just gonna stay isolated as far as consumption of water or far as like the efficiency of the practice like new technology no it will it will have to move in other places of the world unless they have a lot of water because the alternative is not a very good alternative I think you'll you know for example China you know like them or not what they do when they have a problem it's student body right or student body left so China will addicted in a one moment of time and boom some things will change there will be other places where they'll probably go through some hardship before they get there but without a doubt globally water consumption and desalinating for example saltwater things like that will come more and more to the forefront in order to enable continued irrigation okay my next question is actually about the food and last year or was it this year I'm not quite sure now but there was actually a study that came out showing like the trends of eating and it turns out like people are eating less red meat now and less beef and like what does this mean like doesn't mean like the cattle like some may think the cattle like load may decrease and what does this mean for like the practice and like the efficiency of it like do you think this will mean less grain yield and less cost if people switch more to poultry instead of beef certainly of the of the ones poultry would be the lowest on grain consumption hogs would be second and then the most in terms of consumption would be cattle there are without a doubt we're seeing less beef consumed in the US but there are a lot of countries in the world where you know that for the first time they're they're moving away from just eating cereals to being able to eat whether it be pork beef whatever and so that that's still going to spur a lot of that on so we and you know right now part of the challenge is the herd sizes had gotten down so low price of beef have gotten so high and it takes a couple years two and a half years to get a herd size back up so the US will come back up some I don't know you know I think a lot of us believe that the meat consumption still is going to go down for health reasons in the US but you know you take places like Russia you take places like South America you know the average consumption of beef per person is significantly below what it is in the developed markets of the world and and that will drive some of this for sure okay Adam thanks we've got three questions and probably just about enough time for those so let's start over here I have a two bar question too but I can make it quick both of my questions pertain to diversity one you talked about you just touched on sustainability and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about if the company considers biodiversity for a more sustainable ag or if it's something you talk about and if you do how do you consider it yeah I thought diversity was going to go through diversity of the people we hire that's my second question is women okay so on a bio diversity standpoint you know what we we do think about it but in the end what we really focus on is what is it that the customer wants and you know for us the customer is the the producer the farmer and what and now a lot of them are thinking about it even more we do also look at things like through this global harvest initiative we we partner with some NGOs that you might not think that but they also realize sustainable agriculture we're going to need it you know one of the best ways to meet this is right now about a third of the food goes to waste and eliminating that food going to waste is an easy way to really increase the amount of available food for the human population so we are involved in some of those things as well to work on it this is not just about how do we how do we increase yields on existing farms but it that we definitely do spend some time on that we have some people in our group that actually are trying to do research as to where we think it might go and as a result of that how it might impact our business and then the second part certainly diversity is a challenge for all of us you know we we are very much focused on it not just women in agriculture but women in all parts of our business as well as people of color and all other nationalities it was interesting I was at our bank in Luxembourg last week and in that bank we have 200 people and we had 18 countries represented in that bank and it was you know that that's kind of what you really like to see is that level of inclusion because I remember mentioning this to Mitch last time we were together I think one of the reasons the US is going to stay competitive globally is because I think in the US there is the opportunity it's not a given but there's an opportunity to have a much more inclusive culture that allows teams of individuals coming from all parts of the world to work more effectively together and I have not seen that and I've had a chance to be in all around the world I haven't seen that for example in a Japanese company operate as well I haven't seen that for example operate in a South Korean or a Chinese company but you can bring people from all those areas into a multinational US based company and people feel can feel all of their inputs are being considered and you can build a much higher aligned engaged team that way and that's what we're trying to do do you find that you struggle to I guess incorporate women in your workforce because they're less interested in ag you know ag slash engineering certainly one of the things and we actually are working on that is how do we get more girls interested so we were talking earlier today that we partnered with some of the high schools and provided four hours of science engineering training or here's what engineering is all about to high school girls and you know two-thirds of them all of a sudden were more interested in engineering now you got to sustain it but but you can bring along so there's also what part of growing our workforce is also increasing the base from which we can attract from and and certainly that's another thing that we continue to be focused on next the last question over here my name is Andy Dardini and I'm a senior in agriculture education here and my question for you is about the role of education specifically how implementation of that in the classrooms and in the field can help to perpetuate some of the values you're talking about in making a positive impact for the future generations so when we when we think I'm going to answer it two different ways when we think about our people and their development certainly they have to come with a base level of education and education ongoing education becomes important more from showing me the desire to keep learning but in our workforce we would say 70% of the person's development is on the experience as they get so equally we would continue to work on what are the experiences we want this person to have to really round them out and better develop them as we think about ag education especially in developing parts of the world but I would even argue here the number one opportunity to significantly increase yields in India and China and some of the areas of Brazil and other developing markets and Sub-Saharan Africa is agronomic education and so when we work on these partnerships with these NGOs one of the first things we do is is create small schools that are teaching agronomic decision-making and that's the greatest opportunity there so from that standpoint I would say it's it's the education part from our standpoint inside the company while you can always continue to learn we are focused a lot on the experience that you're you're getting thank you so the last word fittingly enough goes to the guy in the green shirt I'm Zach Reaver I'm a first-year master's student in the ecological sciences and engineering program here so my question was of a John Deere being having such a global presence and a huge amount of resources as disposal what role do you see John Deere playing in addressing concerns of climate variability and like nutrient loading of freshwater systems yeah that's a great question and believe it or not that that's one even our board challenges us with making sure are we really thinking about this in entirety we've actually we've been on some groups that you might not think we would be on you know we're in the for example as I mentioned number one in forestry equipment around the world but we were on the you know don't cut down the rainforest Commission and partnered on that in fact I can say even back when I was running the construction forestry group but I know for a fact that then we actually our forestry dealers in Brazil knew that if they ever sold a piece of logging equipment to somebody that was going into the Amazon that we would revoke their license they would no longer be our dealer so we do think there's an element of that that we need to be a part of we do try to participate with other thought leaders on where this is going and as a result of this how are we going to have to react or what are the possibilities the you know it and we're trying to do it from a standpoint of how how do you mitigate climate change but do it in a fashion that incents the farmers rather than penalizing farmers for example so maybe it's an scent no-till practices for example so that you don't let gases come out of the soil those are the type of things we continue to work on and then the other part if you read our stock perspective it will say you know one of the risks that our company faces and companies like ours is climate change and what that might do to weather patterns as a result of that to cropping practices and or regions where you might be able to farm so that's more just how do you mitigate that risk but we also try to work on the policy side with these groups albeit with a with a reason which is that we want to try to do it in a way that is as much as possible favorable or at least not too detrimental to our customers thank you that well let's see smart well educated competent achiever of results risk taker and global vision and on top of all that modest and self-effacing if you didn't know where the man went to school you could pretty much guess Purdue University don't you think thank you Sam Allen for being with us thank you there's just just a little token of how grateful Purdue is and how proud we are of you thank you and please come again soon thanks a lot