Tractor Supply cuts DEI and climate goals after right-wing pressure campaign

Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the United States, will eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) roles, withdraw its carbon emissions targets and stop sponsoring Pride events in response to criticism from conservative activists.

The Brentwood, Tennessee-based company announced a series of sweeping changes in a statement shared on social media Thursday, ending a weeks-long right-wing pressure campaign.

“We work hard to live up to our mission and values ​​every day and represent the values ​​of the communities and customers we serve,” he said. “Customers told us we disappointed them. We have taken these comments to heart.

Tractor Supply sells farm supplies, feed, tools, fencing and clothing — “everything but tractors” — in more than 2,200 stores in 49 states, according to its website. The company says its customers are primarily farmers, horse owners, ranchers, merchants and suburban and rural homeowners.

The Fortune 500 company has been nationally recognized as an inclusive and diverse workplace, including last year’s Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s Best Workplaces for Diversity.

But it has recently become the target of conservative ire for this very reason, as the latest in a growing series of retailers to face backlash — and ultimately backtrack — on its DEI initiatives.

Robby Starbuck, a music video director and Republican who ran unsuccessfully to represent Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District in 2022, launched the campaign against Tractor Supply on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.

On June 6, he wrote that it was “time to denounce Tractor Supply,” which he said was one of conservatives’ favorite brands but was at odds with their values. He pointed to his DEI recruiting practices, his Pride Month decorations in offices, his climate change activism and his “funding of gender reassignments,” among other grievances.

“I take no pleasure in bringing any of this to light,” Starbuck added. “I’m a Tennessean who loves supporting TN businesses, but as a proud Tennessean, I know these woke priorities don’t align with our state or @TractorSupply’s customer base.”

He urged others to “respectfully” flood Tractor Supply’s offices with calls and emails expressing their disapproval and, if possible, to start buying products from other stores.

Their campaign appears to have worked, with the Financial Times reporting that it caused the Nasdaq-listed company’s share price to fall 5% over the past month. Tractor Supply reversed course before the end of the month.

“In the future, we will insure our activities and link them directly to our business,” he said.

Changes appease one group and cause another to lose

These changes include: no longer submitting data to the Human Rights Campaign (an LGBTQ advocacy group), removing its carbon emissions targets to focus on land and water conservation efforts, eliminating its DEI roles, and abandoning its current DEI goals “while ensuring a respectful environment.”

The company also said it would stop sponsoring “non-commercial activities” such as Pride festivals and get-out-the-vote campaigns, and instead continue to focus on “rural American priorities” such as education, animal welfare and veterans’ causes.

His statement on X received more than 71,000 likes and 12,000 comments, many from conservative users applauding the company’s decision and calling for the movement to continue.

“We’re going to get rid of DEI one company at a time,” wrote Libs of TikTok, the inflammatory right-wing, anti-LGBTQ account.

Starbuck hailed the outcome as a “massive victory for sanity” and said in an eight-minute video that it was “the first Fortune 300 company in our lifetime to roll back the clock on ESG, DEI and all these awakened causes and donations, at record speed.”

But it’s not good news for everyone. Many X users have expressed their disappointment with the company, even vowing to stop shopping with it and calling on others to do the same.

Many, like Tennessee Democratic Sen. Charlane Oliver, were particularly disappointed that the company chose to take this stance during Pride Month and the month of June.

Groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and the National Black Farmers Association were quick to denounce Tractor Supply’s decision.

“Tractor Supply’s embarrassing capitulation to the petty whims of anti-LGBTQ extremists puts the company out of touch with the vast majority of Americans who support their LGBTQ friends, family and neighbors,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO. executive director of GLAAD, to The Advocate.. “It sends a terrible message during Pride Month to see a rural staple go out of its way to harm its LGBTQ customers and employees.”

A Tractor Supply spokesperson declined to comment beyond its statement.

Why DEI is important

Shaun Harper, a business professor at the University of Southern California, says that because Tractor Supply stores are primarily located in rural communities, “the DEI advocacy should have been framed differently and better tailored to those cultural contexts.”

Harper told NPR via email that he knows firsthand how activities like Pride parades run into opposition in rural communities, like his hometown in south Georgia (which has its own tractor supply site).

“So it doesn’t surprise me at all that ‘disappointed customers’ have misunderstood that DEI is just a narrow set of activities misaligned with their religious, ideological and family values,” he said. writing.

Frank Dobbin, a Harvard sociology professor who has studied corporate diversity programs for decades, told NPR that ending DEI programs hurts companies in two ways.

“The most important role of DEI programs is to democratize access to good jobs in America,” he says. “Part of it is about what kind of society we want to be. We want to be a society where everyone can succeed – that’s certainly the principle on which we were founded.”

Beyond that, he says, many practices that promote diversity — like recruiting from HBCUs, implementing mentoring programs and offering management training — are also “just good management” from a business perspective, especially in a tight labor market.

He says it’s a mistake for companies to roll back low-cost efforts to level the playing field for underrepresented groups like Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ workers — and to signal so publicly that members of those groups are not welcome at their workplace.

“I don’t think it’s without consequence when a company like Tractor Supply publicly announces that it will no longer continue its programs,” Dobbin adds. “I think it’s not good news that companies are so publicly rejecting their own commitments to trying to do better. »

Tractor Supply is part of a larger trend

The Tractor Supply saga is one example of a much broader back-and-forth around corporate DEI initiatives nationwide.

The 2020 police killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests against racial injustice have fueled advocates’ calls for businesses to do more to hire, retain and promote workers from minority groups.

This has led to a nationwide increase in the hiring of diversity officers and other positions dedicated to leading DEI efforts — and to backlash from conservative critics of DEI.

“As often happens, there was a countermovement against this project,” Dobbin said. “And conservative activists have been very successful in raising money and funding think tanks, which is often where the people who attack corporations are.”

And their boycotts have had some resounding successes in recent years, from Target’s reduction of its LGBTQ+ products this Pride month to Bud Light’s parent company furloughing its executives after its partnership with a transgender influencer sparked a firestorm last year.

Dobbin says many companies are also walking back such initiatives with less fanfare, such as quietly removing the word “diversity” from the title of an internship program.

He believes anti-DEI efforts will continue to advance, aided in part by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action in higher education. In the long term, however, Dobbin doesn’t believe “this is the end of progress in promoting diversity in the workforce.”

“There was a point where the pendulum swung one way,” he adds. “Then it swung back another way. We usually end up somewhere in between those two poles.”