-Submitted photo
Kyle Meyer has always enjoyed welding and designing parts that would make farming easier.

HOLSTEIN — Kyle Meyer recalls, as a high school kid, his father encouraging him to use their farm’s shop equipment to “‘tear stuff apart and put it back together.”

He made trailers and built dozer blades to fit tractors to push silage.

“I enjoyed welding and designing parts that would make farming easier,” said Meyer. “I built a dozen blades after having a few prospects who were interested.”

After high school, Meyer attended Iowa State University earning an Agriculture Systems Technology degree.

“It was a good way to combine my farming background with design,” said Meyer. “The hands-on electrical and hydraulic labs were useful as I wanted to create my own designs and test them in the field.”

Meyer worked for an Ames-area farmer while in school and built a dozer blade for him.

After graduating from ISU in 2005, Meyer — now 39 – began his farming career two miles north and an one-eighth of a mile east of town. Farming with his father, they have grown their corn and soybean rotation to 3,000 acres.

“We typically have a field or two of alfalfa, also,” said Meyer. “There’s a good-sized dairy down the road, and we sell the feed to them. It’s a good relationship.”

Meyer’s farm acreage isn’t the only thing that’s grown, however; he married wife Dana, 33, in 2017, and the couple have two children, Adalyn, 4, and 2-year-old Olivia.

One of the things that has remained constant for Meyer has been his love for designing equipment that makes life on the farm increasingly productive.

“For the past six years, I’ve been thinking about what an ideal planter should be like,” said Meyer. “While planters are typically anywhere from 20- to 90-feet wide, I’m making a 60-foot planter, 24-row, 30-inch. I made it a goal to create something compact and efficient to travel with down the road.”

Other qualities of planter-design importance to Meyer include:

• A short wheelbase with a narrow transport width making the planter easy to maneuver.

• Locating the seed tanks out to the wings, causing less compaction issues.

• Creating a clean toolbar design, routing hoses and wiring harnesses more efficiently.

• Reducing the hydraulic requirements from the tractor.

“Overall, I want this planter to be well-refined, so owning it will pay off for the farmer. Most planters are overloaded in the center,” said Meyer. “I wanted to alleviate this problem while also solving other common large planter problems causing strain on their components.”

Meyer, during the winter of 2020, began designing his planter with computer-aided design (CAD), making parts based on his overall goal to be compact and efficient to travel to the farmer’s field. Meyer’s CAD drawings are now finalized, and he is building a prototype to test this spring.

“The prototype will be ready by planting season,” said Meyer. “I’m looking forward to giving it a go in the field. It’s exciting to find out what works and what needs to be improved.”

Meyer is well-seasoned to the entrepreneurial process, having designed his patented TiltSpear Double Bale Spear for tractors and payloaders.

“The user can move bales 25% faster than with a conventional double spear,” said Meyer. “I also worked with a small startup company, Agriculture Concepts, helping design a product called Tracktill. Tracktill is designed to help eliminate pinch row compaction caused by planter and tractor wheels that can greatly reduce yields.” Yetter Farm Equipment Company purchased the license to Tracktill.

“I’ve also had several failures,” said Meyer, “and, honestly, the more I’ve gotten used to it, the better risks I’ve taken — the more I consider mistakes part of the process leading to success. If I’m not making mistakes, then I’m not working hard enough to end up with a great product.”

For now, however, Meyer is focusing on his new planter.

“I’m excited for the possibilities, what it can do not only for me, but other farmers,” said Meyer. “You’re either improving or standing still, and I prefer to move.”