Operations

Health & Safety

At AGCO, the health and safety of our employees is paramount, and a safe workplace is fundamental to achieving our business goals. We have a unified vision, common goals and a system of accountability across our operations globally: the AGCO Global Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Vision. We have implemented health and safety performance tracking in our environmental management system and work purposefully to achieve continuous improvement across all measures of health and safety.

An important mechanism for driving improvement is our Focus program to foster best practices in Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) in the workplace. Closely connected to the AGCO Production System (APS), Focus emphasizes continuous improvement and individual responsibility for achieving high-quality results. The program is built upon a foundation of five core principles:

• Involvement to make certain that all employees are actively involved in EHS work and share responsibility for ensuring a safe work environment
• Prevention to reduce and eliminate avoidable injuries, illnesses and environmental harm
• Continuous improvement that we measure, monitor, analyze and share
• Education and training so employees know safe methods for carrying out tasks and using personal protective equipment
• Promotion and communication to reinforce our EHS culture, drive behavioral change and foster dialogue, input and feedback

Diversity & Inclusion

We recognize the importance of diversity and inclusion in our global work environments and local communities. From experience, our leaders know diversity of thought promotes creativity and innovation, and that fostering an inclusive environment leverages that creativity to drive greater business success.

AGCO has accelerated its commitment to diversity and inclusion by launching TRAIT, our formal diversity and inclusion effort. TRAIT represents AGCO’s core values of Team Spirit, Respect, Accountability, Integrity and Transparency.

The TRAIT program has four focus areas: human capital, community, markets and supply chain. We have dedicated workstreams for each area, all with the end goal of positioning AGCO as the company of choice in the agriculture industry for employees, customers and suppliers.

Our diversity and inclusion approach places a strong focus on balancing the number of women at every level of the Company, with a special emphasis on increasing the number of women in leadership management positions.

One way we are putting our commitment into practice is through AGWN, the AGCO Global Women’s Network. AGWN is a global business advisory group, supported by a strong network of regional and local groups, dedicated to training and developing women as promoters and growers of profitability and a diverse culture at AGCO. To promote hiring and advancement of women leaders, AGCO also works with external organizations like Women in Agribusiness and Women in Engineering that align with our own goals to build a more gender-diverse pipeline of future leaders.

Find out more on joining the AGCO team.

TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT

Working at AGCO is more than a job. It’s a career in an industry that makes a difference in the lives of billions of people around the globe. At AGCO, we believe that when our employees succeed, our business succeeds. We make sure all of our employees—in every function, every geography and at every level—have the tools they need to be successful and take charge of their careers. When our people grow, our business grows—every day, in every way.

AGCO University

AGCO University, our internal learning program, offers leadership programs to help our employees grow their management skills.

Simply Management is for a targeted population of new leaders as they are hired and move into leadership roles. This course is based on the book, Simply Management by Martin Richenhagen, AGCO's Chairman, President and CEO. The main components include: The Essence of Management, Strategic Planning and Goal Setting, Organizational Structure, Governance and Controls, Employee Development and Advancement, Communication and Motivation.

LEAP is a series of three learning journeys targeted at three levels of leadership: New supervisors (Fundamentals of Leadership), project managers (Driving Results through Leadership) and those preparing to lead leaders and functions (Becoming a Strategic Leader). Cultivating our Leaders and Development Centers are highly valuable global leadership development programs for select transition assistance.

AGCO Agribusiness Qualification Program (AAQ)

Launched in 2017, AGCO is a lead partner in the AGCO Agribusiness Qualification (AAQ) program, which aims to bring young talent into the agribusiness sector in Africa. The AAQ program is a joint effort between AGCO, Strathmore Business School (SBS) in Kenya, the U.K.'s The Harper Adams University, and Kenya‑based The Bridge Africa, that prepares graduates for employment. The AAQ program is a milestone for AGCO and represents our long-term commitment to skills development to benefit everyone involved in the agricultural value chain.

HELPING AFRICA FROM AFRICA

AGCO takes a holistic approach to advancing African agriculture: we identify key challenges and barriers to growth in the industry and develop innovative solutions to overcome them. The Company is making major investments in Africa to engineer food security and support sustainable productivity. And as a first mover in innovation, we are meeting the challenge of growing more food with fewer resources head-on.

Teaching Africa for Africa

The AGCO Future Farm and Training Center in Zambia is designed to elevate resident expertise within the many nations of Africa—drawing farmers and agribusiness professionals from across the continent to explore our latest innovations and relevant technologies.

In 2017, we launched the AGCO Agribusiness Qualification (AAQ), an accredited a two-year agribusiness program at a Strathmore University in Kenya. The program is focused on developing talent, leadership and strategic expertise to further drive African agricultural prosperity.

Financing Africa within Africa

Africa needs affordable farm machinery financing. In fact, only 95 of 900 banks surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa provide financing to farmers. In response, we have established a Retail Finance Partnership to offer low-rate financing so Zambian farmers can purchase vital farm equipment. The new partnership between AGCO, our national distributor BHBW Zambia Limited and the Zambia National Commercial Bank Plc (Zanaco) will provide retail financial solutions for farmers purchasing Massey Ferguson machinery.

AGCO also sponsors the development of the MAC Protocol, an international treaty that would increase the availability of financing for high-value equipment across the mining, agricultural and construction sectors. If implemented, the MAC Protocol would make financing farm equipment more affordable in Africa and emerging markets globally.

Resource Management

We have identified multiple opportunities for AGCO to play a role in reducing energy use and carbon emissions. Our manufacturing operations offer one of the most meaningful and immediate opportunities to do so. AGCO is committed to producing our products in a less energy-intensive manner. To that end, we have implemented a global environmental management system to track energy, water, waste generation and health/safety performance across our facilities. This platform and its centralized database provide a harmonious system accessible to employees from corporate headquarters to the individual sites.

To further enhance our commitment to applying benchmarked practices in energy management, AGCO has an energy policy that supports reduced energy consumption, an increased emphasis on green building, purchasing and renewable energy sources and measurement as well as tracking of energy performance across all relevant areas and equipment.

Water is an increasingly precious resource for communities globally. AGCO is committed to reducing the use of water in our manufacturing processes and using water management practices. We track water usage, and individual manufacturing sites implement water conservation initiatives targeted to meet local needs. These measures include capturing rainwater to benefit our facilities and incorporating water re-use strategies into industrial processes.

We also enhance manufacturing efficiency by finding ways to minimize waste in our operations. Waste outputs are tracked by weight, type and disposal method. And the Company has implemented purchasing agreements for key commodities to increase scrap recycling and the use of returnable pallets and crates. AGCO's tracking activities are designed to encourage recycling in plants, reduce the inflow of waste materials and reinforce lean manufacturing processes.

Our Valtra plant in Suolahti, Finland, demonstrates AGCO's commitment to run a less energy-intensive operation with a reduced carbon footprint. This plant has become the first tractor factory in the world to begin using Neste MY Renewable Diesel as the start-up fuel for all new tractors. In 2018, 721,000 liters of fossil diesel fuel were replaced with 100-percent renewable fuel. From March, all new Valtra tractors rolling off the production line were filled with Neste MY Renewable Diesel, as did all forklift trucks operating at the factory. Replacing regular diesel with Neste My Renewable Diesel has saved 1,891,782 kg worth of CO2 emissions, which equals the annual output of 629 diesel cars.