Moline, Ill.-based Deere & Co. achieved its highest rank ever in the annual “100 Best Corporate Citizens” list, which scored Deere fourth among more than 1,000 publicly traded, large-cap U.S. companies. The yearly evaluation is compiled by CRO magazine, a journal of The CRO, a membership organization for corporate responsibility officers.

Among the categories evaluated by CRO, Deere scored especially well in climate change and human rights. Other strong scores for Deere came in philanthropy, environment and financial performance.

“We see this exercise as a valuable way to decipher companies’ performance on things like governance and sustainability issues, especially when looking at how they did when measured against other companies in the marketplace,” said CRO editor-in-chief Dennis Schaal.

To develop those eligible for the Best Corporate Citizens designation, CRO magazine evaluates each company in the Russell 1000 in partnership with IW Financial, a Portland, Maine, research and consulting firm in environment, social and governance issues. The rankings are based on the public facts and statistics and do not include interviews with company officials.

Other companies in the top 10 are Intel Corp. (1), Eaton Corp. (2), Nike Inc. (3), Genentech Inc (5), Corning Inc. (6), Humana Inc (7), Bank of America Corp. (8), ITT Inc (9) and PG&E Corp. (10). For more details about CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008, the methodology and CRO magazine, visit www.thecro.com.

John Deere is a leading provider of advanced products and services for agriculture and forestry and a major provider of advanced products and services for construction, lawn and turf care, landscaping and irrigation.