One of the coolest parts of our job is working with agribusinesses launching new products. There’s so much innovation and creativity in tackling the challenges of modern farming. But just because you have a great product doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to be successful. Agribusinesses who want to make a splash need to come up with creative product demos to show their solutions off.

Ag Leader, a planting technology company, came to us after they’d just completed a round of field trials. The trials showed that their new planting system, SureForce, made a dramatic difference to plant growth. Now, Ag Leader needed an equally dramatic, impactful way to show those results.

Why Ag Leader’s Solution Matters

The way a seed gets planted is one of the biggest factors impacting a plant’s success or failure. It’s crucial for seeds to sit at the proper depth in the soil. Too deep, and they’ll have to waste energy pushing through extra soil before they can really start growing. Too shallow, and their root system won’t be as robust as it should be.

And, of course, soil conditions aren’t uniform across a field. That means that if a planter applies the same amount of pressure to every seed, some of them will wind up too deep and others will be too shallow. Farmers can manually adjust the planter’s pressure if they notice the soil conditions have changed, but that’s time-consuming and leaves a lot of room for errors.

So Ag Leader’s SureForce system is a big help. By sensing the soil conditions automatically, it can adjust the planter’s pressure in real time. SureForce planters can plant seeds with more force in tough soils, to make sure they get down to the proper depth. But in soft soils, SureForce planters can lighten up the pressure so the seeds don’t sink too deep.

Creating Engaging Product Demos

Ag Leader’s field trials had shown that seeds planted with a SureForce planter grew noticably bigger than seeds planted just one row over by a different planter. So we decided to try to replicate that exactly. Well, not quite exactly — we wouldn’t use real corn plants. But we’d re-create the field as a tabletop display, with dirt and artificial plants.

The corn plants are life-size, reflecting the precise difference SureForce made. And besides the plants themselves, we showed the effect on the root systems too. Each plant replica has a set of roots, hidden behind two sliding doors on the bottom half of the display.

With their tempting “See the Difference!” text, the doors invite viewers to interact with the display — a sure-fire way to make it memorable. When people pull back the doors, they can see the root models below the “soil.” They clearly show that SureForce doesn’t just help plants’ above-ground development, it helps strengthen their roots too.

Making artificial plants, of course, is right in our wheelhouse. Plant replicas with a cutaway view are a little trickier, but nothing we haven’t done before. The real engineering challenge was the sliding doors on the lower half of the display. But we managed it, and shipped the completed display off to Ag Leader in time for them to use it on the Pro Farmer Tour.

Ag Leader’s sales team was happy with the impact the display made on the tour. Which is exactly what we hope for whenever we help agribusinesses create new, engaging product demos! It’s a privilege to help put the spotlight on the exciting developments happening in modern agritech.

(You can see more photos of Ag Leader’s display in our portfolio of custom projects.)