For Fact's Sake: Myth-busting Deere Rumors

With baseball season in full swing, I’m coining a phrase attributed to Yogi Berra: It’s like deja vu all over again. Such is the case with yet another story gone awry in the ag world this week. First it was Case, now Deere. Here’s to fact-checking and myth-busting in the modern age of media, where all too often, sadly, stories become news for all the wrong reasons. 

A few weeks ago Farm Equipment’s Executive Editor penned a blog after her “B.S. Meter” went off in wake of a bogus claim, begun with a YouTube video, claiming Case IH’s Racine, Wis., and Fargo, N.D. plants were shutting down. She noted how quickly such B.S. wildfires spread and wisely warned readers not to fall into the trap of misinformation and unfounded speculation.

Fast forward to this week when I had friends reaching out in the middle of a weekday to ask what was going on with Deere & Co. Sure enough, I immediately found that this time it was Deere staring into the “Trending News” headlights for similar and equally bogus shutdown claims. In the spirit of hard core journalism and to dispel rumors, I dug in to learn more about this disinformation and how it came to be. 

Sure enough, the story is not a story at all. At least not a true one. Zero facts. Quite to the contrary, Deere has shared and we have found, fact-checked and covered a plethora of news in just the past several weeks alone. We know a few things since we cover a few things as part of our editorial responsibilities covering the agriculture industry and all of its players day and night.

The Mystery Unfolds: Myth-busting and Mayhem

From what we can gather, it started with an MSN article which has since been pulled. So there’s that. As Farm Journal’s Agweb reported in a news item June 11, the article was authored by Kieran Schalkwyk and headlined “John Deere Freezes U.S. Manufacturing in Unprecedented Shutdown.” Agweb found it first appeared on MSN.com and was aggregated by Google News feeds last week, claiming Deere had plans for ‘making a radical move that some might think is ‘un-American.’” For its part, Food Tank, which describes itself as “the think tank for food,” published a piece about Deere cutting jobs while expanding operations in Mexico, which started with the update that Deere denied reports it was freezing U.S. operations. So what we have here is, in the words of George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke, a failure to communicate. Or, perhaps, just a failure of people to discern real news from other. Deere and many other manufacturers have certainly expanded production at facilities in Mexico, for decades. Fact. However, it is also factual at this date that there are zero plans for it to shut down American operations. 

Quite the contrary, I might add.

What has been covered — and what we know are facts — include the following, in just the past month alone. Fact-checked, from the source and aligned with our ethical and editorial standards. 

Just a week ago, I’d penned a snapshot summary of a Wall Street Journal article where its reporter interviewed Deere CFO on ways the company planned to cope with incoming tariff costs,“Deere Addresses Plans to Offset Tariff Impacts.”

The day before, news of their new forage harvesters was part of our news coverage. 

The Sentera acquisition was reported on May 23. Prior to that, on May 17, news of Deere’s massive $20 billion investment into manufacturing made headlines, which came on the heels of May 16 coverage where we — along with likely hundreds of national and global media outlets — reported on Deere’s Q2 earnings, including its net income of $1.804 Billion.

A May 6 news article I wrote on the company’s remanufacturing facility’s opening garnered a record number of views on our site after being picked up by multiple other credible outlets.

So, for fact's sake — a phrase used by a nightly network reporter who long ago tired of mis- and disinformation, let’s all stay focused on facts. Moving forward, we’d like to not have to do more myth busting. There’s hard news out there our audiences need and for which they rely upon us.  As we will continue to do, I hope all of you take a hot second to verify and validate before victimizing companies and people making news, wittingly or otherwise.