John Deere Foundation celebrates 75th anniversary

Nov 29, 2023

MOLINE, Ill., , the John Deere Foundation is celebrating 75 years of supporting families who live, work, and learn in John Deere home communities and around the world. With more than $400 million in giving since its inception in 1948, the Foundation has strengthened the work of thousands of non-profit organizations that create meaningful, measurable, and long-lasting impact on the lives of others

As one of the first corporate foundations established by any manufacturer in the United States, the John Deere Foundation has built upon John Deere's legacy of commitment to the people upon whom its success depends, especially our neighbors. During the toughest times, from the Farm Crisis of the 1980s to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Foundation stepped up in John Deere home communities to make sure that those closest to us have access to nutrition, shelter, and education, all of which are vital to self-sufficiency and dignity.

In recent years, the aspirations of the John Deere Foundation have grown as John Deere's success has grown. In 2021, the Foundation announced a commitment to award at least $200 million over the next decade, and since that time has exceeded its goals, including:

$68 million in total giving
42 million meals provided to families
290,000 marginalized youth served through educational programs
9.7 million smallholder farmers supported to increase their incomes and productivity

The impact of the John Deere Foundation on the lives of those it serves is made stronger by the generosity of John Deere employees. Through the Foundation's employee giving programs, which provide matched funds to non-profit organizations that employees support as volunteers and donors, John Deere's employees have helped direct over $20 million of Foundation funds into their home communities since 2021, including:

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”

John Deere Foundation celebrates 75th anniversary

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

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