A military veteran and a plant scientist have teamed up to solve one of agriculture’s most pressing challenges: how to increase crop yields while reducing chemical inputs. Their solution comes from an unexpected source—the microbes found in native prairie lands.
Earnest Agriculture, based in Rantoul, Illinois, has developed a microbial treatment for soybeans that farmers across various states report delivers consistent 6% yield increases. The company’s approach differs fundamentally from conventional agricultural biotechnology by avoiding genetic modification entirely, instead harnessing naturally occurring bacteria discovered in prairies where plants have thrived for millennia without human intervention.
The numbers tell a compelling story for farmers facing rising input costs. Prairie Power Soybean costs $15 per acre to apply but generates an average return of $53 per acre through increased yields and reduced nitrogen needs. That breaks down to an additional 4.5 bushels per acre at current market prices, plus savings of approximately 20 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer.
“Farmers don’t care about flashy tech—they care about whether it works in their soil, with their crop,” says co-founder Eddy Mejia. “That’s what we built Earnest to deliver: performance backed by proof.”
The company’s technology platform takes what they call a “Moneyball” approach to microbial selection. Rather than relying on single bacterial strains like most biological products, Earnest uses phenotyping, sequencing, and proprietary algorithms to identify optimal combinations of multiple microbes that work together in field conditions. This data-driven methodology allows them to create microbial communities specifically matched to enhance plant performance.
“Nature already solved the problem—we’re just decoding it,” adds Dr. Gabe Price, the company’s co-founder and chief scientist who spent a decade researching plant-microbe interactions. “Our job is to match the right microbes together so they help each other—and the plant—thrive.”
The agricultural biotech company has attracted backing from established agricultural institutions including AgLaunch, IndieBioNY, Dairy Farmers of America, and the University of Illinois. This institutional support, combined with positive results from farmer networks across the Midwest, positions the company for significant expansion.
Earnest Agriculture is now preparing to scale operations dramatically. The company has set an ambitious target of treating 50,000 acres with Prairie Power Soybean in 2026 and plans to launch Prairie Power Corn the same year. To support this growth, the company is planning for expanded production capacity, additional regulatory work, and extended market reach.
The timing appears favorable as farmers face multiple pressures including declining soil health, escalating input costs, and diminishing returns from traditional chemical applications. Many growers are actively seeking alternatives that can maintain or improve yields while reducing dependency on synthetic inputs.
For Midwest farmers managing 1,000 or more soybean acres, Earnest Agriculture is offering opportunities to test Prairie Power Soybean on 40-acre plots in 2026. The company is also reaching out to large seed developers, agricultural retailers, and research institutions interested in incorporating their microbial platform into existing product pipelines.
The approach represents a shift in agricultural biotechnology away from genetic engineering toward harnessing and optimizing naturally occurring biological systems. By focusing on native prairie microbes that have evolved alongside plants over thousands of years, Earnest aims to provide farmers with tools that work within natural systems rather than attempting to override them.
As modern agriculture grapples with the dual challenges of feeding a growing global population while reducing environmental impact, solutions that boost productivity without increasing chemical inputs are becoming increasingly valuable. Earnest Agriculture’s prairie-derived microbes offer one path forward, demonstrating that sometimes the most advanced solutions come from understanding and working with nature’s existing systems rather than trying to reinvent them.
