The Aeropod automates soil aeration without robotics. See it at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Farmers around the world face a pressing problem: the equipment they use to till, plant, and harvest their fields is killing their margins. Studies have estimated that soil compaction can reduce yields by 20% to 60%. 

Plowing can help, but it’s a laborious and expensive task that harms soil health in different ways. Muju Earth has developed an alternative, the Aeropod, which automatically aerates the soil without machinery or robotics. The startup says it can promote better soil health while cutting farmers’ tilling costs by half or more.

The device is “built like a seed, it sows like a seed, and it ships like a seed,” Afolayan said. The device is about the size of a fingernail, and farmers drop it in the soil alongside their seeds using the same equipment. There’s no need to till the soil in advance.

“It just really seems like a no-brainer,” Ifeoluwa Afolayan, the company’s co-founder and CEO, tells TechCrunch.

After the Aeropod is exposed to a combination of temperature, pressure, and moisture, it bursts open, loosening the soil and creating small channels that let air, water and roots move through it more easily.

Muju Earth — one of the 200 startups in this year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in October — has tested its devices in lab settings and is embarking on paid field trials this fall in the UK. Nine farmers are participating, and the startup has more than 30 on a waitlist.

Its initial target market is onion growers in the UK since onions are particularly sensitive to soil compaction, Afolayan said.

Tilling a field once might cost around £250 to £400 per hectare when factoring in labor costs, diesel, and wear-and-tear on equipment, Afolayan said. Aeropods should produce similar results at just £100 per hectare, she said.

Aeropods were born during Afolayan’s and co-founder Wangyang Hu’s time at Imperial College London, where they sought to design a product that would improve farmers’ bottom lines while also aiding soil health. The Aeropod’s development was driven by a single question: “How do you make this as simple as sowing a seed?” Afolayan said. “That’s the most equitable practice across every farmer on the planet.”

In addition to farmers, the startup has also heard from companies developing biologic amendments — products added to soil, often containing living microbes, that boost or replace chemical fertilizers. Because those companies’ products work best in aerated soils, they’re interested in pairing with Aeropods.

But Afolayan said that farmers themselves have been leading adoption. Most of the marketing to date has been inbound. “The best thing about Aeropod is the farmers intuitively understand the proposition,” she said.

Muju Earth is one of 200 startups in this year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, a pitch competition at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in October in which 20 finalists will present on the main stage.