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John Deere's Wokeness Gets Exposed. Here's What the Company Did Next.

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  July 17, 2024 8:00 AM

Last month, conservative filmmaker Robby Starbuck led a campaign to expose Tractor Supply’s commitment to woke ideology. Following just three weeks of shining the spotlight on the company’s far-left positions and activities, Tractor Supply completely reversed course, acknowledging that they disappointed their customer base and would do away with DEI, ESG, and other progressive positions. 

On the heels of that successful effort to “bring sanity back to corporate America,” Starbuck moved on to John Deere.

Sure enough, John Deere ended up following Tractor Supply’s lead on Monday.

“Our customers’ trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance to everyone at John Deere. We fully intend to earn it every day and in every way we can," the company said  on X, posting a lengthy statement backtracking on a number of its woke positions.  

Based on ongoing conversations, we have committed to the following:

  • We will no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events.
  • Business Resource Groups will exclusively be focused on professional development, networking, mentoring, and supporting talent recruitment efforts.
  • Auditing all company-mandated training materials and policies to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages, while being in compliance with federal, state, and local laws.
  • Reaffirming within the business that the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.
  • 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.

We remain committed to listening to our customers, employees, and other key stakeholders. Your trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance to everyone at John Deere and we fully intend to earn it every day and in every way we can.

Starbuck praised the move but said more could still be done. 

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"Another huge win in our war on wokeness BUT I don’t think this is enough for customers to go back," he said on X. "Customers want to hear that DEI policies are entirely gone and that they will no longer participate in social credit CEI scoring by HRC. This half measure shows that we’re a powerful force to be reckoned with though. While I’m not completely pleased, I don’t want to downplay the fact that this is another massive win. All of you are helping me force corporate America back to sanity. I won’t rest until we eliminate leftism from corporate America."

In a separate post, Starbuck noted that his strategy is working and some companies are even beginning to roll back woke programs even without an exposé for fear one is coming. 

"We’re proving that the customer is king again, not Blackrock, State Street or Vanguard and certainly not the HRC," he said. "DEI is poison and we won’t rest until the public knows how companies have strayed from American values."