As father and son co-founders of the startup Grain Weevil, Chad Johnson, CEO, and Ben Johnson, chief innovation officer, are no stranger to life in rural Nebraska. When they began working on their robot design, their idea came from a Nebraska farmer's request to “never have to go inside a grain bin again.” This request highlighted the health and safety risks grain bins pose to farmers, and together they built a robotic solution.
Grain bins store crops like soy, corn and wheat before they are transported to buyers, but they're less than ideal to work in. To get grain to flow out of the storage bin, farmers use a shovel to manually knock down crusts or steep grain ridges on the grain surface, which can lead to severe or fatal injuries. Farmers can get caught in the grain as the surface shifts or fall toward the dangerous sweep augur. This is a large piece of maintenance equipment with a spiral blade at the grain bin base. Besides the risk of injuries from falling, anyone working inside the bin breathes air filled with grain particles and dust, affecting their health. “Our robot is designed to do the work that no human should,” said Chad Johnson.
To keep farmers out of bins, the Johnsons formed Grain Weevil and developed a robot that semiautonomously travels across grain surfaces with a robotic arm. The compact, but powerful, robot can break up the grain surface, mix and churn the grain, and aerate it, enabling it to flow while preserving its quality. “Our robot can run patterns on the surface of the grain to monitor issues that you would see throughout grain storage, like crusting, molding or moisture migrating,” said Ben Johnson. These features save farmers time and help them identify issues more reliably. Ultimately, this helps reduce grain spoilage and improve grain drying times, which preserves the economic value of the grain.
Chad's business acumen and Ben's electrical engineering expertise contributed to the rapid, early growth of the startup. During Ben's senior year studying electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska, the duo participated in the AgLaunch accelerator with investment from Innova Memphis, an AgTech early-stage investor, out of their Innova Ag Innovation Fund IV. Grain Weevil's first round of investment helped them secure a prototyping grant.
Multiple design constraints informed how they approached their first robot prototype, built in 2020. It needed to fit in a man-sized hole to reach the grain, withstand the hazardous conditions of the grain bin and have the strength to address grain issues. The robot also needed to be cost effective for farmers. After officially launching the company in 2021, they built a team and went through 12 design iterations until they were ready to begin field trials on the farm. Incorporating farmer interviews and feedback was a crucial part of the design process. “A lot of technology focuses on data collection or helping farmers make decisions. Once we received feedback, we realized that doing the manual labor is more important in the context of robotics,” said Ben Johnson.
CoBank contributed equity to Innova Ag Innovation Fund IV and Innova Ag Innovation Fund VI, which invested in Grain Weevil when they were advancing from the design process to generating revenue. This stage of investment is critical to startup growth, and the Grain Weevil founders consider CoBank one of the most valuable partners in their startup journey. As they built out their network, they expanded from partnerships in Nebraska to other markets in the Midwest. “We have deployed 70 robots and we have inventory to continue to build 90 more,” said Chad Johnson.
CoBank is proud to back venture capital firms who invest in startups like Grain Weevil, focusing on rural innovations that farmers directly say they need. Grain Weevil users have responded with excitement to the robot by sharing it in their social media feeds. Chad and Ben are optimistic about the potential to scale their robot design, as it replaces work farmers don't want to do. “There are so many people that have helped us along the way that we're so thankful for,” said Chad Johnson.