Farmer Sense
Jayson Ryner- Re Envision Ag
(upbeat music) - Hello everyone, welcome to the Farmer Sense Podcast. I'm your host, Rick Willard. Andrew Fuff is my co-host. He's with us today. How are you, Andrew? - Good, Rick. So do we need to put the word "V" in front of it now? I guess. I didn't know we were fancy now. - Yeah, just like Ohio State University. - Oh, that's fancy. - Mm-hmm. - Well, you want me to change it up, so that's how I do it. - Yes, yeah, I like it, it's something different. How are you? - I'm good, I'm all stuffed up. I've mowed lawns for like four hours yesterday, between my eyes and my sinuses and all stuff. I take allergy meds because of Ava, 'cause I'm allergic to dogs and stuff that apparently doesn't help with everything else, so. - Yeah. - Maybe it's, maybe it's my sexy voice today. - Maybe, I don't know. - Yeah, I am just moving a little slower today. Had a few beers golfing last night, so. - Oh, man. - Went and played men's night, and that was fun, so. - Goodness, goodness. - I know, I don't get out much, but that was fun. Oh, I gotta tell you a funny story. I bought a brand new hybrid three iron, or three hybrid. So I got it like, I don't know, two, three weeks ago. It came in the mail, so I'm like, oh, I'm finally gonna go golfing. I'm gonna go get it out of the box down at the shed, 'cause it was from UPS. Go down there, cut the box open, take off and go to golf, and get up to the first tee box, and that's like the one of the holes that I used, it was gonna use this on. First practice swing. I just took it back nice and easy. Not even swing hard. - Solid one. - No, the shaft broke. Never even hit golf law. It broke before I even, yeah. First practice nice and slow and snap. So. - Isn't no name club, just something cheap? - No, it's a Mizuno. So I'm even went back on there, and they're supposed to be sending me a new one. I think I gotta send this one back, but yeah. Awesome. Never even hit a golf ball with it. I wasn't even up to a golf ball yet. I just got it out of the bag and just a light swing and snap. Wow. - I wasn't saying that's pretty hard. - The head just snapped off. - No, middle of the shaft. - Oh, Jesus, I don't know if I'd want another one. - Middle of the shaft, just. Let's see what it looks like. - Oh my goodness. Okay, so Mizuno golf clubs, no matter if you're a really shitty golfer or a medium-shitty golfer. - Yeah. - Don't lie on. (laughs) - Yeah, well, other than mowing yesterday and spraying fungicide and insecticide on beans for customers this week, dodging rain showers here and there and storms. - That's what he got in. - Yeah, we only had like three or four tents. What, Sunday night? - Yeah. - It was, and then we didn't get anything the other night. - It started up just east of us. - Oh, well, you had some Monday night? - Yeah. - Yeah, 'cause that's, yeah, we saw you on Monday. - Yep, four tents. - Yeah, that's right. Nice. - We had 2300 here on Wednesday night. - With that storm that came through? - Yeah. - I figured it would've dumped a little more, but it went pretty fast, didn't it? - Yeah, 40, 35 minutes of wind with the storm. With rain, I mean, a little bit of rain, but mostly wind. - It blew, but I don't know how, but all the corn still standing. - Oh, you don't know how the wind blew? 'Cause I can explain that for you. - Yeah, would you tell me how it actually blows? 'Cause that butterfly effect thing, are we talking any way? - Let's just move on, 'cause I can't even think of a good way to get into that one. - Yeah, but I don't know. We were lucky, like Omaha area had, I think the airport said 96 mile an hour wind gusts on one through there. - Yes. - We didn't have that. I would guess like 60, 55, 60, but. - Okay, so not terrible, but it just kept blowing forever. So, yeah, I got one load of fun to decide left to do. So that's gonna get done today, and then I'm done. Then we take off, man. I'm gonna see you next week. - Yeah, went on Thursday, Wednesday night, Thursday morning, something like that. I don't know, I don't even have a hotel room or nothing. - Oh, really? - Maybe you won't see. - Maybe you won't see. - I don't even know where I'm going. - I don't even know where I'm going, no. I couldn't find the sign up. I couldn't find anything when I registered for that strip till conference. - I swear we were on. - I didn't even have an email that says I got signed up. - Now, I got an email the other day sign something about they had extra tickets for. - Yeah, I got that yesterday. - So that means it says dear attendee, so I assume that means that I did. - I did. - I assume that means I signed up, so. - Yeah, I don't know, if they sent an email, usually when you sign up for that kind of thing, then they send you an email saying you're signed up, and then they give you instructions on how to book a hotel room and everything. And I never got anything to do that, so. Well, I'll talk about that later, I guess, but. - Yeah, well, it's a Marriott West or whatever. In Madison, Wisconsin. - Okey-dokey. - We're gonna come to you live, right? No, not live, but when I try to do a recording up there, sure. - And then we use it? - I don't. - That's what I said. - I don't care. We can do whatever. I don't play in my days very well, as you can tell. (laughs) - I don't play mine very well either, but. - Kind of go the flow. Like today, we do have a guest, Jason Reiner. He's from up in my neck of the woods. - That was what, I was wondering where he was at, so he must not be too far from you? - Yeah, no, I sit on a, on the tell, telephone board with him. - Yep. - All the directors, and it was also my choir instructor when I was in high school. - Awesome. You guys gonna break out some show tunes today? - I wasn't in choir, but he was. - Well, you just said he was you. - Well, he was, he was there, but I wasn't in choir. I was a band geek. - Yeah. - How are your crops look? I don't think they look as bad as what you were making them out to me when I was there this week. - Well, everything's covered up now with weeds. - Yeah. - Perfect. I didn't see any weeds. - Well, so I did buy some more generic liberty. I was gonna, I'm gonna border some bean fields. Holy shit. Queen Anne's lace, that white flowery thing. Fuck the hat stuff. I was just completely taken over from the ditches and just merged right into fields. And I think part of it's probably because of no till, but I know those seeds or whatever, they blow and float into your field. So, and it's not really, I mean, you can kill it, but you have to target it. You can't just. - Right. - They all, it'll drift off and kind of kill that plant. So, you actually got to turn on your fenstral nozzle and blast it pretty good or whatever to get it dead. And it grows quick. It'll be, geez, that first time I've sprayed the beans, they, gosh, that plant was probably four foot tall in the fence line. It's not that tall out in the field. It took a while, but anyway, so that, that's ugly. And then I have fox tail coming in from the outsides. And then I got giant ragweed everywhere. I even got a cornfield. One that we haven't farmed very long. It had a lot of weed pressure, but I'm definitely going to fly my drone over it with some two, four D probably in another week to 10 days. Make sure that brown silk is actually all brown silk. Yeah. And then just hope we don't get a 60 mile an hour wind like he did and blow it all over. It didn't blow it over. And you got, I got lucky and I didn't tell you it did. I was nervous there for a while when I heard that and there was telephone poles and stuff to the west of me down. I'm like, oh, this is going to be great. But soon, especially when I got just done with some more fungicide. And so I was down to like one load left and I'm like, oh, good. Now it all will flat and I'm going to have to spray that last load. Yeah. Now I'm going to go do it, but I got some aphids in my corn. Yeah. So I saw a thing on X this morning that had a plant. That had aphids and one that didn't and it was 18 by like 34. Where it didn't have a aphids and it was 18 by 18 with aphids. Okay. I'm like, well, didn't those aphids have to come in during pollination? Yeah, they cause a little later from, I mean. I was there silk clipping, you know, over the silks. Cause they don't do that. That would have been from a, um, you know, or rubber beetle. Yep. So well, I'll tell you something about eight corn aphids. So you're. Perfect. Years ago, a grime. I'm told that, oh, don't worry about them. They'll do nothing. No, no, no bullshit. They don't. I did a check a couple of years ago sprayed and it was like five bushel. I mean, I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. 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I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. But you were young too. You're not that much older than me. But I'm not trying to aid you or anything. But knowing you back then, when you were a choir instructor, I had no idea that you were a farmer or were involved in farming. And then I got to know you by sitting on the telephone board with you the last few years and then found out that you're quite very very very very very very very very very very very very very interesting and. Yeah, do you want to tell a little bit about yourself or how you even got into what you're doing? Well, my dad was an early adopter of no till soybeans in the 80s. Mainly because he could. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. I was like, oh, that's a good thing. Mainly because he could. He could make more money in the hog house than he could run in a field cultivator and put in hours on machinery. And so I went away from the farm. Kid of the 80s farm crisis sure didn't seem fun. Went and and like you said, I got a music degree because that seemed like a lot more fun than ag finance, which is what I started out my major as. And taught music for a while and then had my own boys and decided, you know, I wanted to start up the farming operation again. My dad had retired and sold out all the machinery in 2007. But in 2014, I started a farming operation from scratch with a 4430 that was delivered in kindergarten. When I was in kindergarten, the 4430 was delivered to the farm. And I started farming with that and a borrowed six row. Enter farming 250 acres. You know, just to get just to get started. Wanted my kids to experience some of the same farm life that I did and and all that kind of stuff and learn how to work. So having my kids underneath the field cultivator helping me change shovels and all that kind of stuff. But to start a farming operation from scratch, paying cash rent and real cash rent, not, you know, family discount cash rent. And you're trying to get a little bit of machinery around to do the job and there were beginning farmer. Beginning farmer programs to go no till strip till and plant crops and, you know, so 2015, I signed up for that. And then I started learning why people struggled with no till and strip till and cover crops. You know, I live Floyd County. One of the top tier counties in Iowa is where I farmed. And, and, you know, 2018, 2019 when it was really wet and I couldn't use a field cultivator to dry out the soil or, you know, go through, swing through the wet spots to try to get stuff planted. I got sick of being four or five days behind my neighbors when I was planting, even into strips. And, and so I decided to try to find a different way, you know, I, I couldn't plant because double disc openers caused disc opener compaction and well, what else is there? Well, there's nothing else. All right, no. And so, you know, if there's only one way to do something, there's probably another way. And, and so that's what we started working on. Yeah. So you just lied awake at night kind of like I do and try to think of a different way to do something or an easier way. I think a lot of farmers try to hit that easy button. But they also want to do it right and that, you know, they want to make the most dollar. But gosh, how's this going to improve my operation? How's it going to buy me another day of not having to do this or that or get out in the field when it's dry versus gosh, it's just going to rain again tomorrow. And yeah, so I know, I know exactly. Yeah. And then those, you know, getting that planting window is so, so important. And, you know, you lose four or five days, like you get another big weather event. Now we're now instead of being four days behind my neighbor, I'm 12 days behind my neighbor. And before you know it, you're out of the planting window. And, you know, it really hits the bottom line. And so my choice is really where to go back to using a field cultivator and doing what most guys do or find a different way to plant. And yeah, I laid awake a lot of times. Spring of 2018, we put our strips in on the 25th of May. And I planted it the 27th of May. And I pushed the ground. And, you know, farming was really my second job. I still was teaching music. But I didn't want to lose my whole year. You know, I mean, the margins are so thin and losing money wasn't really one of the options. So, so I had to figure out something else. I had to figure out something else. And I told my dad, if I could go out with a pencil and poke a hole and put a seed in it, the seed wouldn't care that it was wet, you know, the seed doesn't care. I mean, eventually, yeah, we got to have dry feet, right? But yeah, oxygen and soil. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, so, but I didn't want to have to go out there and poke 36,000 seed poles per acre, you know, drop each seed in. So, so how do you go about doing that? And I mean, we, I had a group of buddies and we sat around, you know, and, and we're like, well, what about an air nailer? Could you, could you shoot the seed in with an air nailer? Well, you never know whether you're going to hit a root ball or, or, you know, what, how firm the soil is. You know, so you would never get consistent depth. How could we do that? And so we tried a whole bunch of things and we came up with something and, and did some research on it and it was patentable. So, you know, that's one of the, that's one of the keys is you got to be able to get some intellectual property around it. And so we came up with this idea of a pin that goes in the ground and there's two, um, there's a door that keeps the hole blocked and pulls the, pulls the door back. The seed drops out and then an ejection pin presses it into the soil to get seed to soil contact. And, uh, so rather, you know, the only system we have, we smoosh the soil all the way. Drop a seed and smoosh the soil back over top of it. Last I knew smoosh and soil met compaction right there in the, in the Ritz zone. Um, so let's not do that. Mm hmm. And so you basically came up with re-envisionedag, right? Dot com. So you do have some interesting videos on there. I was checking them out yesterday and this morning. So you really tried to come up with a planting method for the newer generation soil health era as well. Is that kind of how you got the whole thought process? Yeah. So, so really. John Deere made their last mobile plow, you know, in 2023. Yeah. So, you know, in 2023 to put in their museum and we're out of the soil tillage era and we're now in the soil there. And soil health and, and building soil health and, um, retaining water when we want to retain it, but letting it drain when we want it to drain. Um, you know, really. How do we have new tools for a new era of farming? And that's what was interesting in the videos. It's a totally different concept than I've ever seen before. And it was interesting. Is there a lot of moving parts in this deal to poke every seed down into the ground? Yeah. There are more moving parts for, um, uh, in comparison to, um, you know, just the disc opener. Um, but, and, and some of the videos are getting a little bit dated. So between 23 and 24, we've removed 50% of our moving parts. Oh, wow. And, um, for 24 to 25, I don't think we're going to get to another 50%, but we're getting rid of, um, a lot of the where parts that, um, are problematic, right? We're building it a lot more robust. Um, and, and, you know, instead of having a cantilevered bearing that kind of sits out there and isn't all the bearings are going to be supported on each side, you know, um, so yeah, it's got more moving parts, but each iteration, you know, get smaller, fewer moving parts. That's, you know, I mean, every, every iteration, and it's, it's crazy. The engineering process, you know, we got our new row unit delivered. I saw it assembled for the first time in the, in this, the shop behind me is one, three design and cedar falls. That's our engineering shop. Um, and, and I saw it in last week in March. And as soon as I saw it, I mean, you start thinking about all the new things. All right. Well, we do this better this way. Do this the better this way. But you got to go out and test what you have because you put, you know, quite a bit of cash into building a new time guy in a row unit. So yeah, the videos, some of the videos are dated. If you, if you have a video from 23, we've any video in 24 S half moving parts of 23 and, um, and you can go out to YouTube. And if you go to YouTube and just put in re-envision ag, our channel will pop up and you can watch some of the silliness and, and some of the seriousness to to and, uh, yeah. Yeah. If you click on the videos tab on your website, that'll take you to where you can subscribe to their YouTube page. And then you can watch all the videos there as well. Um, yeah, it's a nice website. Yes, it is. Very, very interesting. But I, I do have one question. And I'm sure a lot of people are wondering this. So you have this, you know, this wheel and you're, if you watch some of the videos, you can see that you have perfect spacing. So you want six inches, you got six inches, but what if you want or inches or what if you want to go three inches deep or you only want to go an inch deep? I mean, is all that stuff adjustable on this plan? So depth control, depth control is adjustable for sure. Um, so that we can plant corn at two inches deep, two and a half inches deep. Um, and then come back and plant cotton at an inch deep. Um, spacing wise right now. We're fixed at every six inches. Um, because that's, that is one of the real tricks. Um, next year for 2025, we'll have adjustability. Um, but it'll be like inch and a half adjustability and it'll be manual. So, so like say I want to do 34,500 population. That's every six inches and 30 intros. Just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Perfect. Um, I've, I've put out on social media, uh, an article from from Pioneer that actually pick it row. Exact spacing doesn't lead to the best yield necessarily. And so when you, when you get them a little closer together and a little further apart, that one that has, that, that corn stock that has just a little bit more space can grow a little bit. Um, bigger ear and you can actually squeeze a little bit more out as long as the seeds are like more than four inches apart. So, you know, corn plants don't want to be any closer than four and a half inches apart. So our, our plan is then to have, you can choose four and a half inches, six inches, seven and a half inches. And then where you place the spikes on the reel and maybe row one is set at every six inches, but row two has one extra one put in, one extra spike put in and, or, you know, so that we can get variable, again, an adjustable rate, but it's going to be a manual adjustable rate where you're going to have to set it up before you go to the field and changing it. I mean, you're, it might take half a day to change the population for 25. Um, but then the goal is to bring variable rate population in 2026. Um, and I can't, I can't say a lot because we don't have really the, we don't have really the intellectual property secured about how we're going to do it. Mm hmm. But pretty much any farmer has seen, uh, pulley that changes in size. Mm hmm. Like a, like a snowmobile engine or, uh, a very low rate. Any kind of variable rate transmission. Rotor on your combine. Exactly. I mean, so this is not, this is not stuff that, you know, that is new to the industry at all. We're just now applying it in a different spot. Um, and, and so, yeah, the, the, if you've got spikes on a real and you want them to change the, how far apart they are, you change the size of the reel and get, bring them closer together or bring them further apart. So, and that's how we're going to do it. And that adds back more moving parts in. So that's one of the reasons why before we get, before we get to there, we're, you know, just crunching and crunching and, and looking at different ways to engineer things to get rid of moving parts, make it more simple, more simple, more simple so that we can then add that complexity back in. Now, is this, is this unit for like a box planner? How do you get the seeds to the unit itself? So it's all engineered so that the center fill, um, can plug right into our seed meter, we did version one of our own seed meter. Now we've got intellectual property of rat around that. We filed a patent on that too. So our seed meter, the seed actually blows through. Okay. Like, you know, most seed meters are like a vaccine mirror. The seed is sucked against the disc and then you break the vacuum to let the seed drop into the speed tube or the seed tube. Uh huh. White planters, they blow the seed against the disc. But again, you break that pressure to let the seed drop. R's were blowing the seed against the disc. And, um, then when it gets to a point, it blows through the disc and into the spike. So one of the keys to being able to go faster is how fast can we get the seed to the end of that spike? Um, and, and, and so we're, it blows in through my dream is that the air from the centerfill will be enough air to blow the seed all the way into the spike. And, and people older, senior to me, and certainly senior to you guys, um, there's a, oh, now I'm not going to remember the international cycle, the cycle planner. I still have one. I have a six row. So, so the cycle planner, we're the best row unit of cycle planners ever seen. Cause the problem with the cyclo is that it didn't space the seed's well enough, right? Oh, it didn't. Cause it jiggled jaggle through the tube is a problem. It got a lot of ricochet. Right. So imagine blowing that seed like the cyclo did, but having it end up in a spike where it's going to be placed exactly perfectly. Um, and so yes, use the centerfill. We can use box fill as well. Um, and, and we're actually working on a, uh, uh, kind of a, um, contract with a major, um, seed. Planting company. Um, can't really, we don't have an agreement in place yet, but one of the best seed metering companies in the world to take over our seed meter and really make sure that it's very, very precise. So, um, that's also what we're looking for for 25 spring of 25 to debut it and then it'd be commercially available in 26. Awesome. So you talked about speed. What kind of is the target speed right now for the, the version that you're currently on? So six miles an hour. Um, is, is our target speed? We've talked to a lot of our target customer farmers. A lot of the, um, soil health guys that are doing no till, um, plant into green cover crops, that kind of thing. You know, they're, they're, well, how fast do you actually plant? Um, and, you know, as long as we can go six miles per hour, they're going to be happy. That's not the, that's not the peak of the high speed planter market. We understand that. Um, but those aren't our target audience. I mean, John Deere does a great job. Agco does a great job of taking care of the guys that are farming 10,000 acres and they're going eight, 10, 12 miles an hour. Those people have been taken care of. We're taking care of the emerging market. The guys that don't have, um, that kind of speed, even, they don't, they don't really even care. They, you know, riding across the no till field that faster than six miles an hour, you know, try staying in the tractor seat, right? You know, and, and so most of our market, most of our target market drive between three and a half and five miles an hour. So we figure if we can go six, um, I've got a video out that of us going six point three miles per hour and it didn't break. So, um, it's some time, some time before the ground gets hard here this fall, I'll go as fast as I can go until it breaks. But I don't want to break it until we're done testing it for the year, right? So that'll be, that'll be the last test is, is getting in the throttle a little bit. I want to, I want to watch that video when you do that one. Yeah. Make sure you record it. Yeah. It's nasty. I mean, at six point three miles per hour. We're planning, well, at four miles an hour, we're planning 12 seats a second. I was watching the video. Yeah. Four seats. We're at four mile an hour. It's 12 seats a second at six and miles an hour. It's 18 seats a second that we're blowing into that spike. At some point, we aren't going to be able to blow them in fast enough, right? We're going to need more pressure. Yep. There's the video. Um, and you can see the, the spikes. I mean, they're going like crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So that's 18 holes poked per second. And the hole is a perfectly round little space. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's exact. So is it also putting, once it puts the seed in, so it's firm on the bottom, right? Yep. Where it goes in. And then what about the, where, where the top of it is that just put in or is it packed in kind of like a closing wheel? How are you getting compaction on top side of that scene? We don't want compaction on the top side of the seat at all. So the injection band actually presses it into the sidewall. So just like you said, it, the, the, there's firm at the bottom of the hole, but the seed actually gets pressed into a sidewall of the hole. Um, so five of the six sides of the seed are only touched. And now this is our closing system here. Um, this is what we're trying. And we just run those wavy collars, you know, just very, very, very shallow, quarter of an inch, half an inch, then follow it with a drag chain. And the goal is just to splash dirt into the hole and fill it up. Um, and then what happens is that the roots have no compaction around them at all, except for, um, and you can see on this, this video, there, there's the seed pressed into the front sidewall about hole at an inch and a half deep. And, um, as long as we cover the seed with enough dirt to keep the sunlight off and the, and herbicide off of it, it's pressed into the sidewall. So it has good seed to soil contact to get moisture for germination. The roots have free rain to go down. There's no, you know, they, they aren't going to follow a seed trench. You know, you don't have any hatchet roots from the seed trench or anything like that. Cause there's always a place for the root to get down. And then the germ comes right back up through the hole. Cause that's where the soil is disturbed. That's the soil that'll dry out. It then is the warm, you know, it dries out. So it's the warmest. And that, that plant just senses that warmth and up it comes right back up through the hole. Yeah. The, the crazy part about that is, um, it's a mechanical release, right? So it's a mechanical trigger to press that seed into the soil. We're going to put a sensor when that mechanical trigger happens. And we'll be able to geolocate where every plant is because it will grow back up through that hole. So imagine your sea and spray. Okay. Imagine your sea and spray. If it already knew where the cash crop was located. Oh, yeah. Like it takes the math out of, you know, right now the sea and spray has to be, has to identify the weed. Well, if it already knows where the cash crop is, everything else is a weed. And, and, you know, I mean, so when we start talking about. Going into the future. Um, knowing where every cash crop is planted. Is it, you know, I mean, it, it opens a lot of doors. Yeah. So do you have a monitor so you can kind of see this or you don't even need one because it's so perfect, right? Well, yeah, we don't have a monitor yet per se. That's in 25 with the new seed meter. We'll be monitoring that each seed goes into each spike. Okay. Um, and people are like, well, how do you know it comes out of the spike? And I say, well, how do you know it comes out of your seed tube? Yeah. Let's, you know, Probably pretty much all of us have experienced getting a seed tube plugged. Right. And, and you'd get the alarm when the seed tube is all full of seeds and you have it planned. Anything for a hundred and fifty. Yep. Yes. Thank you. Yep. Right. So, so you got this blank row and God help you. You want to make sure it's away from the road that they can see it. Um, but for us, the seed tube is only the length of the spike. So we, we blow the seed in and, you know, we got about four inches of seed tube in the spike. But the other 11 spikes on the, on the wheel are all still working. So you basically end up with a skip every 12th plant until. That seed can't be blown in there, just like a regular seed tube. Now when the seed can't drop, then we don't see it and, and we get the alarm. Right. So in that way, it's, it's quite an improvement. Oh, that, that, that video goes back to. 2023 there. Yeah. It's an old one, but it shows a good up close of the idea that we're going with. That's kind of what I was looking for was. Yeah. So you, you look at that row cleaner. You would never ever go out into a field that wet to plant. No. But you look at the backside of our row unit. And in that version, we're on a skid plate. And we adjust the height of the wheel to, to do the depth. And you look at the end and you just have little holes poked with a seat in it. Yeah. And, and there is no other compaction around the root in the red zone at all. So. You know, go for it. Go ahead and plant five to seven days. We implant five to seven days ahead of a, where you'd run a field cultivator. Okay. And then it becomes, then becomes the weight of the tractor. That's your problem. And the weight of the planner. So do you have video of just a, like up close of the, of the row unit? Like, even if it, even a. I don't know. Maybe, maybe an idea would be to have like a. One of my. It's just a video of just the actual row unit itself. Yeah. Not like a cartoon, but you know what I mean? Just kind of a drawing. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I had a drawing made. Cause people couldn't understand what I was talking about. Like, I, you know, in 2019, fall of 19, when I came up with the idea, I was like, you know, like a ferris wheel, except for, you know, people are like, what? You want to do what it, and really it is a ferris wheel. It is a soybean reel. Um, with flip over. Times. It's, I mean, it's all those things, but you know, you play it to a new paradigm. Um, here's the T's go out, have listeners go out to YouTube and subscribe to the channel. We've got more content coming. All right. Go out to the channel. We got more content coming. Yep. Yeah. I've been a subscriber for a while. So I always get to see it. And then on Facebook too, you get videos. I mean, yeah, it's out there. And I guess I wanted to talk about some of, uh, real quick before we get to a few other questions, but, um, you've been on, uh, some different award shows and stuff. Uh, the pivot bio, uh, you were on, I can't remember the name of that exact farm. Farm next. Yeah. We were one of the top nine teams for farm next. Um, so yeah, if you go out and Google farm, pivot bio farm next season two episode two. Um, we got to pitch to that panel, which was unbelievable, you know, to go and, and see where they film their TV shows and be, be in there and meet the people, um, behind all that. That was pretty cool. Um, so it was, it was put on RFD TV. Uh, we lost our episode because we were up against moth sex. Um, so they had, uh, so corn borer and the moth bowl weevil are the same bug. And they've got a, they got a new way to release a virus into the, into the court, cotton bowl we will and corn borer. Yep. And, uh, and so we, we were not as sexy. Yeah. Um, um, moth venereal disease. Um, so we, we lost, we lost out that one. Um, so, but that, that was cool. In 2023, we were also one of the top 10 semi finalists for, um, Ag Innovation of the Year with American Farm Bureau. Um, we've applied to that contest again. I don't know if we'll be able to. There's nothing in the rules that says that you can't come back and compete again in that contest. So we're going to, we threw it at our hat in that ring. Um, last December, we won the innovation, uh, uh, innovation venture challenge. So the state of Iowa has federal funds that they've put into the innovation fund. Um, and they run a contest. We, we came away. We're very blessed for first place and $100,000 to put in their engineering. Um, and now we're going to be doing another fund raise and, and probably that in a venture fund from the state of Iowa will become an investor in the company. So, um, yeah, so that was really fun. We're also in there is the radical corn challenge going on right now. So we applied to the radical corn challenge. That's the Iowa corn growers. Um, different states corn growers all went together with this radical VC. Um, and, and so I know we made it through one round. Um, they're really, really hush hush. They have it. Um, but, but if we make it to the finals. For a radical change in corn growing is basically what it is. Um, if we make it to finals there, that'll be, that, that'll be a big day. So fingers crossed that we can, we can still do that. So, you know, they're, they're farming groups that support. Innovation. Um, both American farm Bureau, Iowa farm Bureau, Iowa corn growers association, soybean growers association. Um, and, and they have venture funds that they, that they were put on these contests, you know, to try to get things out. So, and it's a really good way to, you know, get an article in the spokesmen and get a lot of attention from potential customers and let farmers know what's coming up. Yeah. So what, what is coming up? Do you get field days or anything this year? Uh, so we just did a field day with Egg Ventures Alliance. Um, on the 13th of August, we'll be in eastern Iowa to flow low farms with Lauren Steinloggy. And then on September 5th in the evening and September 7th in the morning. So it's a Thursday night and a Sunday or Saturday morning. We're going to do a field day at our own farm, uh, in near red Iowa. And we've got, you know, corn plants that you can row from the, from the gravel now. Um, we just got done planting some sunflower seeds and a few more rows of corn. Um, so that people can come out and see, you know, exactly how it works. We're going to demo the row unit. We're going to talk about all of the innovation that's happening to it for spring of 2025. Um, so if, if farmers want to RSVP, that would be great. So we know how much food and beverage to have on September 5th in red Iowa. Um, but yeah, people are curious and go out to the website, fill out the, uh, interest form. Um, and, and let us know they want to come to that field day. And you know, I mean, certainly if you don't fill out the form, don't feel like you can't come because, but, you know, just to try to get some sort of number. It'd be helpful, but, um, so registration isn't required. But we'd love for you to go out to reenvision ag.com and fill out the interest form and let us know that you're going to come on the evening of September 5th or the morning of September 7th and check out the seed spike. Um, there's initial plans to have a robot there as well. Um, so we haven't talked about autonomous farming, but there's. Yeah, that's a whole new episode. Um, and then, and then the stock cropper, which if you haven't had the stock, Zach Smith from the stock cropper on, you probably should do that. Yeah, I know I've talked about I use so it's pioneer with him. Yeah, yeah. Well, he gave up his pioneer dealership to build these autonomous chicken coops. Um, and, and so I think that Zach is going to bring one of those down. Cool. So there'll be some other stuff to see besides just, uh, the, the reenvision ag seed spike, but, but it's really our, our way to say thank you to the advisors and investors that we've had. And then allow customers to come and, and see, see the development. Yeah, I've got guys have been waiting for two or three years to buy a row unit and they're like, I want to come see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, mark me down for the fifth, the seventh is Iowa. I was staying game and I think I'm, I'm kind of going to that. It's an Iowa city. But, um, yeah, I'll be there the evening of the fifth for sure. I shouldn't say it's an enemy territory, right? Yeah. We're, we're agnostic to who's with your football team. It's just a great day in Iowa. Exactly. What a, what a great thing though, come out and see the newest ag innovation and then go to your favorite sport park. There's only so many people can get in the stadium and Iowa city, right? Oh, yeah. We don't, I don't go to the game. I just go to tailgate. That's all I know Saturday morning. Yeah, I won't be there. No, I've never, I don't think, I don't think I've ever actually been in maybe one, one time I was in the stadium during the game, but yeah, we always tailgate and then we'll leave about an hour before kickoff. And then hit up bar and sit there and watch it. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. But, uh, you are booking. Another thing I get, not only am I going to be there September 5th. In the evening, but also next spring, I'd like to have you out of my farm to do a trial as well. And you are taking custom planting. Booking trials right now for that, aren't you? Yeah, and that'll be the, that'll be, there'll be a big form there on the field days on the 5th and 7th, but we're kicking off booking custom planting trials and they're very farmer friendly. We're using the custom, the ISU custom rate. Average rate that'll come out in March of 25 and we're looking to, we're looking to book paid trials. And so why, why paid trials, Jason? Number one, it really helps with the money side of, if there are farmers that are willing to pay you 24, 21, 23, whatever it happens to end up being bucks per acre to come out and plant. We're booking acres and that, that's going to really drive how many row units we build for 2025. And then, but, you know, there's only going to be so many acres that we can plant. So if you're interested in having us come to your farm and, and plant so that you can see on your farm, a side by side trial versus a disk opener planter will come and plant, you know, 20, 30, 40 acres, whatever. And we can do part of the field right next to your planter, but it's very farmer friendly if, if the, if the innovation isn't working as well as we say it's going to work for you so that you don't have to put at risk those acres. Then, then we'll, we'll have exit points for the farmer. So it really becomes a very low risk way for you to try out on your farm and see how this new planter stacks up and, and how it behaves and what, what really is capable of it. And then we'll come back and, and maybe host some area farmers around to have people take a look and see. But yeah, booking acres for 2025. And so if you've got a small field that maybe it's not so great to unfold your 24 row planner for right. Yeah, we'll come plant that thing that's not right. Yeah, so just looking for acres to try it in different soil types, you know, people are always worried about rocks. Well, rocks are rocks. They're everywhere. Right. And so, yeah, we're, and again, you just go out to the website fill out the interest form and, and we'll be in touch with you. So yeah, read vision ag and felt the interest for more. Come to the field they see what it's like. Find out more. Awesome. So let's talk about selling your first 60 units and that kind of a goal that you have. Yeah, so what we're, what we're going to do is we've, we're creating a pamphlet with all of the options of what, what the row unit will do for for for 2026. So we're looking, we're going to demonstrate with all these field trials, the paid field trials. Here, here is the row unit working. And, and then looking out just a limited release, the first 60 row units. So a new planters about 20 grand a row. Okay. So that's the MSRP on our, on, on our new row unit is $20,000 per row, but to retrofit, you know, you're looking at 10 grand a row. All right. So let's say that you're getting ready to retrofit your planter. We're, we're going to come. And we're only doing a limited release of 60 row units and that is so that we can take excellent care of those farmers and those row units so that we can have somebody on site with them. So we'll deliver them in fall and fourth quarter of 2025. And then in first quarter 2026 will come and help you install them on your planter. Make sure that they're working. All right. And, and we're discounting that right now it's a 40% discount so it'd be $12,000 per row. And, and they're like, well, but Jason, you didn't didn't say you have variable rate. I want variable rate. Well, in addition to that, we're going to do free upgrades for 30 months. So everything that we come out with for the next 30 months after, after January 1 of 2026. The farmer gets those upgrades for free. And, and again, the way that this game is played from a financial standpoint is the venture capitalists want to be sure that there is demand for the new product. Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and, and there are early adopters who are, you know, somebody always buys the first one somebody bought the first Tesla. Right. Somebody bought the first time buying somebody bought the first Model T. And, but for the investors to continue to pump money in, they want to see that there's that there is demand. So we're looking for very few farmers that are willing to take that shot with us. And again, in the contract in the purchase agreement, there'll be a down payment of a certain amount per row. We're not really, we haven't really settled on that amount per row yet. It's not going to be a huge number. But then we will have a checklist of all the things that we promise that that real units going to do for you, the farmer. And if we don't hit any of those boxes to your satisfaction. We'll give you your, your deposit money back. Right. But, but really the first 60 row units and why only 60. It's, it's so that we can really take care of those few guys and make sure that this is working for them. You know, we don't, we don't want to mess anybody up right, you know, and it's a, it is a huge capital investment, you know, refitting your planter is a huge capital investment and we understand that risk. And, but those are the things that we're doing for the farmer so that we can get those first 60 row units sold for, you know, and we're looking for the deposits now between now and the end of the year. So that we can then know that we had got the capital, you know, we can borrow the capital to build the row units. Right now, we're, we're selling each one of the 60 at a loss because, you know, just like everything else. You got to scale the thing right so, you know, having, having individual spikes cast happens to be expensive, you're only doing a couple hundred of them. But when you go to manufacturer them and you're doing thousands of them well then the price comes way down. So, so that's, that's what we're looking at to buy those to sell those for 60 row units. And, you know, whether it's five guys with 12 rows or a guy with 24 rows and a few others with 12 or maybe you want to put three rows on the end of your 24 row planner so you have rows side by side. And that'll work too. Right. So our row unit retrofits to any, any manufacturers row unit just disconnect the four bolts on the parallel arms and, and put our row unit on and stick another monitor in the tractor. And then you'd have your own, you'd have your own trial and you really know how they worked. Yeah. Well, Jason, thank you very much for coming on. I'm going to leave so you guys can talk about the investment side. Yeah, you'll get a meeting too. I do have one here at 10. So anyway, thank you very much. It was awesome. I'm going to try to make it to a field day. I know that week's not very good for me, but we'll see what happens. Very interesting. You bet. Thank you. You bet. Yeah, good. We got rid of him now. So, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. But yeah, that's what so he had the six year old units. I was going to ask if you could just get one or two and put it on your planner. That's good that you mentioned that you could put just a couple on the ends or whatever but then I take it you are looking for investors farmer investors. Any type of investor, right? I mean, that's, that's kind of the goal to get things up and running. So well, and you know, we've spent about a million dollars to get to where we are. And one of the things on the field days, September 5th and 7th, we're going to have all of the, all of the ideations or all the generations of the row unit. We're right on. We're on version four right now, right? Awesome. Yeah. We've got the proof of concept model that we literally pushed with a snow blower, self-propelled snow blower, and then our four other models and they're all going to be side by side. And this is what a million dollars got us. We're looking to raise another million. And yeah, so it's kind of crazy when a million dollars starts to not sound like a lot of money. But we're basically going to put into 2025. Everything that we put into 1920, 2021, 2022, 2024, those five years, how much money we spent in the last five years, we plan on spending again, all the next year. To really, as, you know, as things get finer tuned, they're more expensive and we need to have some sales staff and we need to have office help and we need to have technicians to go out and help. So, to invest. There's a group called countryside angels here in in Mason City and around. I mean, you don't have to be from Mason City to join, but. So there'll be information on at the field day, or again, you can go to the website reinvision egg.com fill out the interest form. Tell us what you what you're looking for. So that really having farmers on our capitalization table is a great thing. We have most most of the people that have invested in it are farmers or actively engaged in an agriculture in some way. And those people really become our sounding boards. They tell us, you know, when we have decisions to be made, we go to those farmers, and we ask them what they think about about the development of the company, which one, which one of these things is more critical for us to work on right now, you know. And that's why depth control and spacing has always been kind of forefront of the list, right? Yep. And, and so we're looking for another million dollars worth of investment. And kicking that off here third quarter. Yeah, well, September 5th and 7th is really the big kickoff for raising those funds. And so the ways that, you know, you can. Participate as a farmer in a coming development and. You know, there, there's only one way to plant 700 million acres of row crops around the world right now. If we were able to capture 5% of the market, say 5% of the planters in the world, we're seeds by planters. We'd be the fourth largest planner manufacturer in the world. You know, are there 5% are there 5% of humans that are willing to try something new just because it's new. You know, and I think so. And, and, and so do I, right. And, and I've given up the farming for right now. We've subled the ground to somebody else because believe it or not. Starting. And so I think that's the way that we're going to do it. And so I think that's the way that we're going to do it. And so I think that's the way that we're going to do it. And so I think that's the way that we're going to do it. That's, it's exactly that. It's exactly that. So. Yeah, that's, you know, and there are terms and contracts and, and investment limits. But if there are farmers who are interested in. Putting some chips on the table for the next generation of row crop planter. You know, we're, we're open for that investment. Yeah, and I mean, if people can be listening to this saying like, Oh, you know, it sounds like a great idea. I like this idea. But, you know, maybe this should be done or whatever. Well, become an investor. Throw in your two cents. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, I don't think anybody's going to say this is a horrible idea. I mean, because most of people are just going to be like, Oh, what did I think of that? You know, more of a jealousy than anything. But yeah, if you're out there and you think I like what he's doing. You know, but, you know, maybe try it this way. Well, throw some money in the pot and, you know, see what happens. You, but you, but that's right. Yeah, yes. Come out and see us. Follow us. Subscribe online. And, and, you know, pretty much everybody that told me I was full of crap has taken it back now. So far. And, and so, you know, there, there are other ways to do things. And we're just looking to really build the first planter for the soil health era. Yeah, I remember the first time you told me about it. You didn't tell me necessarily what you're doing. You just asked me, you said, Hey, if there was a planter that you could go out five to five days to a week early. And, you know, not ideal conditions, you know, and, and plant a seed at perfect depth and perfect spacing each time. Would you be interested? And I said, yeah. And then, I don't know how many months later you're like, yeah, this is what I got going. So, yeah, great. I, yeah, I think, I think anybody with an idea out there should do their best to get it going. Share it, whatever it might be. Even I had this idea of the stupid podcast that would show startups and help farmers do things different, you know, and share ideas and get farmers talking and Andrew got on board and that's why we're doing this. Yeah, we don't have a million followers or anything, but it's just fun to do. So, well, the million followers come with good information, you know, the more, the more new stuff that you bring. And, you know, that comes to my day job. So, I was a music teacher and a part time farmer. Well, now I teach entrepreneurship. I teach principles of marketing principles of selling and how to start a company. And, and, and so I'm using the fact that I've been talking to venture capitalists from around the world literally Brazil, Europe, you name it. That is so now that's, that's what I'm doing for, for my own, I don't take any money out of the company, I put money into the company. And looking for more to put in. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, and so, so I don't take, I don't take a salary company. I'm doing this, you know, it's my moonshot. And, and so, but, but now my day job is to help help people. So if you are a farmer who has an idea for something new. I need to talk to anybody and let them know about the steps to get started on, on that and, and one of the big things is, and I did, I made this mistake. I was worried somebody was going to steal my idea. Well, guess what? Other people have had the idea of poking seeds into the soil. Right. All right, this is not, you know, most of the ideas are not new. Most of the ideas are, can you execute on it? So yeah, if there are farmers out there, again, you know, just go to the, go to the reinvision Ag website, my emails there, my phone numbers there. Happy to, happy to take calls. If you've got an idea for a nut, for a product and you want to, you want to take tackle this entrepreneurship thing. Come along for the ride. We've got, we've got some pretty cool people around. I mentioned Zach Smith before. You need to have on one of my students is Caleb Brenner. He's got a new idea to eliminate Ben sweeps. So he's, he's working on that idea. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. We'd love to talk to any entrepreneur because it's kind of a pay it forward thing, right? Yeah, I've gotten this far because of help from other people, help from farmers. You know, opinions are free and, you know, you got to pick the right ones to listen to. Yeah, that's for sure. But, but yeah, love the entrepreneurship thing is, it's, it's a real kick. It depends on the day where you're getting kicked. Yeah. Yeah, and where. Yeah. Well, it's great having you on here. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that have heard of you and a lot of people that haven't, but hopefully there's going to be a lot more talking about you and sharing all this information. We'll, we'll get them to go to your YouTube channel and subscribe. Hopefully they do the same for us when they're doing that. And so, re-envision is spelled, the website is re-en-vi-s-i-o-n-a-g. So re-en-vision-a-g.com. And that's because somebody else in Australia, or I take an re-envision. Yeah, because the first time, this was months ago, but the first time I went to Google it, that's what I did. I was like, hmm, that ain't right. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, check it out. And Jason, thank you very much for being on here. I'm sure, I know, I guarantee we're going to have you on again because we're going to have a follow up for some of your updates and maybe we'll have some video and follow up when you do the trial on my farm. Yeah, thanks a lot, Rick. Yeah, don't hang up, though, because I got a couple other questions for you when we get off here. So take care and we'll chat with you later. Thanks. It's great. Thank you. [Music]