Nora Springs farmer’s company working to develop the next generation of planting technology

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

An area farmer is looking to innovate the next era of planter technology.

Jayson Ryner of Nora Springs is the founder and CEO of ReEnvision Ag, a relatively new ag business startup that is working to revolutionize the way farmers get seeds into the soil.

“Since 1853, when the planter was invented, we’ve only changed the place where the planter touches the ground one time,” said Ryner. “As we’re moving into the soil health era of agriculture where we’re trying to reduce tillage and use cover crops and plant into more varied conditions, we needed a new way to plant.”

According to Ryner, the double-disk opener has been the standard tool for planting since the 1970s. But its limitations have become increasingly noticeable in recent years, particularly when it comes to planting in wet conditions.

“If you plant in wet conditions, disk opener compaction can reduce yield by 20 to 50 percent,” said Ryner. “So planting wet isn’t really an option.”

After becoming frustrated with back-to-back years of record moisture in 2018 and 2019, Ryner began to consider new ways to place seeds in the ground in a way that would reduce soil compaction. In January 2020, Ryner formed ReEnvision Ag, a startup business dedicated to the engineering and development of new planting technology.

“All of the current systems press the soil out of the way, drop the seed, and then smush the soil over the top of the seed,” said Ryner. “Any time you move the soil like that when it’s wet, you have a problem.”

The solution he came up with was the “seed spike” which, in its most simplistic terms, is a dibble that pokes a hole directly into the soil and places a seed inside. Once the hole naturally fills with dirt, the germinating seed then has an easy path upward to get to the sunlight.

“The simplest and most precise way to plant a seed with the least amount of contact is to press a seed into the soil,” said Ryner. “Our spike goes straight in and straight out, so our only compaction is at the bottom of the hole.”

Starting from that endpoint, Ryner and his team began to work backward to engineer a way to utilize the Seed Spike at a commercially viable level. Using a dibble to plant a single seed is one thing. Developing a technology that can reliably and efficiently plant tens of thousands of seeds is another matter completely.

Several ideas were considered to put the Seed Spikes to work, such as using air compressors to make them operate similarly to nail guns. However, in the end, it was the operating principles of Ferris Wheels that ended up working out, keeping the dibbles oriented in a straight downward position as the base rotates across the field.

Still in the early stages of development, ReEnvision is working with One3 Design in Cedar Falls to test and develop prototypes of the planter. They hope to soon do some custom planting for farmers willing to allow them to field test their planters in real world conditions.

Capable of attaching to existing planters, the Seed Spike system is lighter than traditional double-disk planters, not only allowing them to work more efficiently in wet soil conditions, but overall reducing soil compaction.

The current iteration of the planter can plant 12 seeds per second per row, or about 34,500 seeds per acre, while operating about 4 mph. Letting gravity do the work, seeds are lined up in a funnel and pushed down into the soil. Gravity only moves things so quickly though, so ReEnvision is working on engineering solutions to get seeds through the funnel faster, which will in turn allow the planter to move faster, aiming for 6 to 7 mph.

“While we are continuing to innovate, we are testing what we currently have,” said Ryner.

In the long term, Ryner hopes that ReEnvision Ag will have revenue coming in by spring of 2024 and plans on being able to offer lease agreements for farmers interested in the new planters in spring of 2025. Beyond that, Ryner is looking forward to a future where autonomous robots pull his planters across the fields.

Getting to that point will take a lot of time and a lot of investment. With a plan in mind, ReEnvision Ag set out to raise money to fund the development of the new technology, seeking out partnership and earning startup funds through business plan contests.

Early on, ReEnvision Ag won the Charles City Area Development Corporation’s 2020 Business Plan Development Competition and other pitch contests since. Developing brand new technology is an expensive endeavor that will ultimately require hundreds of thousands of dollars, but those early investments were critical to getting off the ground.

“That $2,500 was no small amount of money. When you’re just getting going and gaining speed, that was really beneficial,” said Ryner. “Those early wins gave us money to get going and confidence to continue.”

More recently, ReEnvision Ag was recognized as a semifinalist in the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Ag Innovation Challenge, receiving $10,000 in prize money. Ryner presented his invention at the Farm Bureau’s annual convention Jan. 6-11 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the business models were shown in a “Shark Tank”-style competition.

When he’s not busy inventing new ag technology, Ryner is choir director at North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC).