John Deere is a brand name of an American corporation Deere & Company, which specializes in manufacturing of agricultural machinery including tractors, combine harvesters, cotton harvesters, sprayers, silage technique, planters, seeders etc. Besides the company produces construction machinery, such as excavators, loaders, tracked loaders, graders, bulldozers and others, as well as a range of forestry equipment covering harvesters, forwarders and skidders, which in 2000 was supplemented by timberjacks. In addition diesel engines, transmissions for heavy machinery, gardening equipment, snow machines are also released by the company.

John Deere’s logo was registered for the first time in 1876 and became one of the most recognizable logos in the world. Over the years it has changed to this or that extent but it was always with a leaping deer which graceful figure symbolized permanent creation and revival.

The company's headquarters is located in Moline, Illinois, USA. But Deere & Company has factories, offices and other facilities in over 30 countries so that Deere’s specialists could see and act in response to their clients’ demands in any part of the world.

The history of the company started in 1837 in Grand Detour, Illinois where John Deere, the founder of the company, opened a blacksmith shop to repair and manufacture horseshoes, pitchforks, shovels and other small things needed by farmers. The farmers’ work in the field was hard as the Midwestern dark-brown soil, one of the richest in the world, was very difficult to plow for the reason of high viscosity. Working with cast-iron plows farmers had to stop their work very often to clean the sticky soil off of their plows. The work was tough and non-productive. Deere has cautiously analyzed the trouble and made a conclusion that people needed a plow that would be cleaned by itself, without any assistance. He has carefully thought about the material for a moldboard, about its shape, the curve line. Every detail mattered. It was a work of the inventor John Deere. A self-cleaning plow was made out of a broken steel blade which he carefully polished. Probably the demand for his first invention influenced his decision to specialize in farm equipment.

Plow production grew slowly at first. In 1838 he produced and sold three plows. Deere often corrected and improved his plows, changed design considering as well his clients’ suggestions. In 1839 he made ten plows and in 1840 – forty ones. His resourcefulness and diligence has brought him a success. In 1848 his business flourished, that year he manufactured 2,000 plows. Deere’s plows were principally qualitative – they did not become dirty and did not wear out as fast as wood and iron plows.

The invention of a useful steel plow played an important role in the history of the settlement of the Midwestern regions of the newly formed United States. Hard-working farmers could acquire an efficient agricultural implement for plowing sticky prairie soils.

John Deere has also introduced an innovation in the process of selling products. He rejected the idea to make products only on custom’s order as other blacksmiths did at the time, and started to manufacture for exhibiting. Thus people could see and try finished products. Deere’s plows rapidly became famous outside Grand Detour.

In 1843 he managed to ship rolled steel from England. Steel was transported across the ocean, by rivers and finally by wagon was delivered to Deere’s factory in Grand Detour. When they started to produce cast steel in the US in 1846 John Deere decided to move to Moline, Illinois taking into consideration transportation trouble and potential to use water power of the Mississippi River.

In 1857 in Moline John Deere Company was officially registered. In 1858 John's son became his partner in business. Starting from 1868 the company’s name became Deere & Company. Over the years the company’s product lines were growing and nowadays it provides highly developed products and services especially to people working in the agricultural sphere.

John Deere was President of the company up to 1982 when he died.