John Teeple joined Sukup Manufacturing’s expanded executive team as chief operating officer in May after more than 20 years with John Deere.

“John has stellar experience in agriculture and manufacturing, and will be a valuable addition to our team,” said Steve Sukup, president and CEO. “As Sukup continues growing and technology is increasingly critical to farm and agriculture products, we are confident in John’s ability to work with our manufacturing operations, shipping, facility optimization, and product development teams.”

• READ MORE: Q&A: Steve Sukup, president and CEO

After a couple of weeks on the job, Teeple sat down with Successful Farming editor Natalina Sents for an exclusive interview.

SF: Tell me a little bit about who you are and what brought you to Sukup.

JT: I grew up about 20 miles east of Sheffield, Iowa [Sukup’s headquarters], in a small town called Greene, Iowa. I actually come from a family business. My grandfather and father ran a service station and farm tire repair business. That was a big part of where I worked as a kid in addition to walking beans, detasseling corn, picking up rocks, and baling hay. Essentially everything in small town Iowa was in one way or another connected to agriculture.

My wife and I are from the same hometown. We really are high school sweethearts. We dated in high school, went to Iowa State together, and the rest is history. We have three college-age children. We have a son who’s attending grad school at Iowa State University in mechanical engineering. We have a daughter who graduates from Coe College in Cedar Rapids next year in nursing. Our youngest daughter just ended her first year at the University of Iowa in engineering. So, we just became empty nesters.

I spent the majority of my career at John Deere. I was there over 23 years in technology, engineering, manufacturing, and strategy roles. The last five years of my career were focused primarily on precision agriculture and innovation and strategy around applying new technology in agriculture.

After my first year of undergrad at Iowa State, I spent the summer working for Sukup Manufacturing on the shop floor. It was my first real job outside of our own family business. I was running machines and disassembling some returned products. There’s a bit of a full circle here.

Photo credit: Google Maps

SF: It’s neat to hear you’re returning to your hometown area. Help me understand what you learned in your years at Deere that you’ll bring back with you.

JT: I ran one of the tractor businesses in a manufacturing focused role in Waterloo. I was the factory manager at John Deere Des Moines Works in Ankeny for three-and-a-half years. I had the opportunity to go through a significant growth and expansion of the facility in Ankeny.

There are things about my first few weeks at Sukup Manufacturing that have reminded me what it felt like in 2010 and 2011 during the peak in ag commodity prices, and therefore demand for equipment. It feels similar right now at Sukup with record commodity prices in the last few months and strong demand from customers globally. It’s an opportunity to understand how to serve customer demand and support the growth that is happening now and the anticipated growth that is coming.

A big share of my career was focused on innovation, strategy, and technology. Sukup is a company built on innovation, starting with Eugene Sukup himself as an innovator. He was a farmer who had over 200 patents and started a company that’s very focused on innovation. In our industry, technology is playing a more and more significant role in improving productivity, reducing costs, and improving efficiencies and uptime. That applies very well with Sukup’s products and with their innovative forward thinking. I’m really excited about beginning to apply some of those lessons I learned in product development and innovation at Sukup.

• READ MORE: Sukup Manufacturing Co. founder dies at 89

SF: We’re coming out of the pandemic with some high raw materials prices and workforce challenges. There are lots of unique things happening in our economy at once. What does this mean for Sukup?

JT: The first answer is, a lot of uncertainty. Anyone involved in any supply chain today is feeling stress, and there’s a lot of uncertainty as you look to the future.

The impressive thing about joining Sukup, given those challenges, particularly as they relate to commodity prices, is the professionalism in their strategies around hedging raw materials. They’ve done a phenomenal job of planning ahead and anticipating this volatility that has happened in steel pricing.

I think the challenge is looking forward. Every time you pick up The Wall Street Journal or Successful Farming, you’re hearing about the next supply chain challenge. It seems to be affecting everything from pet food to our major inputs like steel, electronic components, circuit boards, and controllers.

There’s a lot of uncertainty as the world is beginning to address the hangover of the implications of COVID. So much of the supply chain was disrupted, and in many cases, completely shut down. Ramping up is a process that has its own set of challenges. The advantage Sukup, and other essential industries, had during the pandemic was they were able to keep running. There was a sense of normalcy and some of those supply chains remained somewhat intact, maybe at lower volumes. The challenge is that this isn’t the case for all parts of the supply chain.

Now, there’s added uncertainty with respect to inflation and fluctuation in our customers’ commodities – corn, soy, and wheat. We’ve been really blessed with some outstanding recent prices, but it’s hard to anticipate where we go from here.

Biofuels is another source of uncertainty. The biofuels industry represents a big customer base for us directly and indirectly through our farmer and commercial customers. The uncertainty, particularly in Iowa, is another concern to add to the list.

But, I think the tailwinds supporting agriculture in general, and specifically storage and drying and material handling are extremely strong. Population growth and food demand and changing diets are certainly driving more protein consumption, which requires more inputs. That bodes well for our business and further investment in infrastructure.

SF: That’s a long list of uncertainties. Are there any that stand out as the biggest challenges?

JT: Probably a tie between the uncertainty around raw material cost and supply, which in our case is primarily steel.

I would say the other uncertainty would be the implications of inflation on future major capital investments, like the types of infrastructure that we manufacture. Those are the two big sources of uncertainty in the near term.

• READ MORE: Q&A: Emily Schmitt, Sukup chief administrative officer and general counsel

SF: Could you give me an update on Sukup’s innovation since I talked with Emily Schmitt in February 2021?

JT: In my role I’m responsible for both operations and the functions that support manufacturing as well as engineering, and research and development. I’ve had early conversations about our R&D pipeline and innovations that are in the works at various stages. At this point, I would say there’s more to come.

As far as the world’s largest grain bin in Mason City, it’s quite an impressive site and is nearing completion. It looks like they’ll be putting it into operation soon. It’s amazing to see a grain bin of that size and capability. It demonstrates Sukup’s continued commitment in investing to push the boundaries for their customer and in innovation. They’re willing to take on something that has never been done before and invest in it.

Photo credit: Sukup

SF: You pointed out your career path is coming full circle. If you could talk to young John working his first job at Sukup today, what would you tell yourself from your seat as COO?

JT: I would say the experiences like my summer at Sukup were instrumental in helping me build and grow my interest in all things mechanical and manufacturing related. It also further incentivized continuing my education because it was a tough job. It was in the summer. It was hot and it was manual labor. It was hard work. I think experiences like that gave me a firsthand understanding of some manufacturing processes, which supported my focus on education.

My general philosophy is you need to be a lifelong learner, particularly as it relates to how much technology has become core to any conversation that we have. Almost any product is becoming a smart product, a connected product, an intelligent product. Obviously, that happened during my tenure at Deere, and is going to continue to play a significant role at Sukup with current and future products. That interest in technology and continuing to educate myself and ultimately get an advanced degree was probably a key lesson from that summer working at Sukup.

I wouldn’t have envisioned coming full circle, but I am certainly proud to be able to come back to north-central Iowa, close to home and family, and be able to serve with a company with such significant success in the last 60 years.

SF: You listed a lot of uncertainty you deal with in your role as COO. Your farmer customers are also dealing with uncertainties in their business. If you could sit and have a cup of coffee with them or offer encouragement, what would you say?

JT: Having a father-in-law and brother-in-law and other relatives who are farming the family farms, some of which my wife and I have invested in over the years, it’s always interesting to have conversations around uncertainty. In agriculture that generally starts with the weather, and it works its way into commodity markets and other macro-economic factors.

The main consistent theme is we need to become comfortable with volatility. We need to take steps to minimize the impact of volatility. Storage is a great example of that. Storage allows farmers the ability to manage how and when they market their grains. It gives them additional leverage.

Regardless of where we sit in the cycle of agriculture, even at the peak, the conversation is managing through volatility. How do we take those steps to level the playing field a bit, like storage, and also continuously focus on reducing costs, improving productivity, improving yield potential, and reducing exposure. It’s looking for ways to streamline the business, become more professional, become more efficient and productive. Much of that can be done through technology, so that’s where a lot of our investments are going.