It started with forty acres of sagebrush in Utah County, bought in 1979 so a father's sons could turn it into a sod farm and earn money for college. Decades later, one of those sons heard a friend was using nanotechnology to improve a dry-cleaning business and wondered whether the same idea could do something for a farm. The trials that followed beat industry standards — and the sod farm became an agtech company.
That company is Nano-Yield, and its co-founder and CEO, Clark Bell, joins us this week on Agbioscience. Nano-Yield builds a nanoparticle delivery system that helps plants take up the fertilizer and crop protection already going on the field — more from existing inputs rather than more inputs, and it's earned the company a 2026 Stevie Award for agricultural innovation, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist nod, and a No. 2,539 ranking on the 2026 Inc. 5000 on 127% three-year growth.
Highlights include:
The core problem Nano-Yield is solving for farmers — and why this is the right moment for the technology
Why "more efficiency from existing inputs" is landing now instead of "add another product"
Nanotechnology in plain English: what a grower actually needs to understand about how it improves productivity
What makes the science genuinely different from traditional fertilizer enhancement and other crop input technologies
From a technical standpoint, what's happening inside the plant that allows the approach to improve performance and efficiency
What growers have said as they integrated Nano-Yield into their operations
The USDA backing tied to innovative domestic fertilizer production and business growth — how that support accelerates expansion and validates the opportunity
Scaling without weakening the science or muddying the value proposition for the farmer
The measurable results customers are seeing today in yield, nutrient efficiency, crop health and consistency
A customer story that captures the impact of the technology
Balancing innovation talk with what farmers care about most: return on investment and operational simplicity
What the Stevie Award and EY finalist honors mean — and what they say about the company's maturity
What will define success for Nano-Yield over the next year: adoption, farmer outcomes, partnerships, or something else
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