Am I Buying Real Fulvic Acid?
Why Test Results Doesn’t Always Tell The Truth
By Russell Taylor, CCA
Imagine for a moment that you’re at a farmers’ market searching for a bottle of good wine. A vendor hands you a bottle and says, “This is red. It comes from grapes. It’s a liquid. Therefore, it’s wine.” You take a sip and realize it’s just grape juice. You feel duped, and rightly so. While grape juice can become wine, without undergoing the complex fermentation process it is still just juice. The two products share a commonality, but they are not the same. And, if they were sold side by side in a grocery store both bearing the same labeling we might even say that a deceptive marketing tactic had been employed.
Greenwashing, using vague or exaggerated claims, is an ever increasing problem and the world of agriculture is not immune. Unsubstantiated labeling is creating a confusing shopping experience for farmers seeking to improve soil health and crop yields with fulvic acid. Not all of the fulvic acid options available are created equal and many products out there are just grape juice masquerading as wine.
When it comes to fulvic acid agricultural products the problem is more than just a labeling issue; it’s a testing issue. The fulvic acid many growers are choosing has cheated the testing system and is likely not the high quality product they thought they were investing in. Determining real fulvic acid requires a good grasp on where this soil amendment comes from and what makes its properties so beneficial.
What is Fulvic Acid?
Fulvic acid is a naturally occurring substance that forms over thousands of years as organic matter decays and transforms into humus through a process called humification. Like grape juice to wine, a transformation must occur that turns organic matter into something similar but. different. In the case of fulvic acid, microbes break down the cellular walls of living material over a long period of time. Eventually the microbes can no longer feed on the material and the broken down pieces are left to recombine into something new.
This happens in soils, compost piles, and ancient deposits like leonardite or humic shale. Leaves, wood, and microbes stew for millennia into a rich, dark, biologically active material. Before it can completely reform into something like coal, humus can be mined and fulvic acid
extracted and used as a soil amendment. When we extract fulvic acid from these deposits using water or a mild acid, we isolate a complex mix of organic acids, trace minerals, and biologically active molecules. These substances help plants grow better, use nutrients more efficiently, and
handle stress. Though fulvic acid can vary in composition based on its age, parent material and where it was sourced, it must go through this micro conversion process.
The rockstar of the humic category, fulvic acid is favored among growers because it is soluble in all Ph levels meaning it can be mixed with anything without gelling. While the benefits are numerous in agriculture, farmers rely on fulvic acid to increase rooting availability and, due to its affinity for positively charged ions, as a mechanism for getting nutrients into a system. The Fake Fulvic Acid Problem
Fulvic acid benefits are real and a single application can yield decades of positive impact on soil and plant growth. The problem is, not everything labeled “fulvic acid” is fulvic acid. These days, growers can find many modern products that skip the humification process completely. Rather than extract fulvic acid from long decomposed matter, some companies synthesize their own “fake” fulvic acid. These products are derived not from rich dark biologically active material broken down and rebuilt over thousands of years, but from fast, cheap inputs like corn steep liquor, soybean digest, lignosulfonates, even residues from paper pulping.
Like humus, cheap inputs may contain organic compounds, but they’re not humified. They haven’t gone through the geological and microbial transformation that turns dead plant matter into fulvic acid. If grape juice has not been fermented we can’t call it wine just as organic material cannot be called fulvic acid if it has not been humified. Yet, if we are just looking for grapes both the juice and the wine would pass the test. This is where fulvic acid testing is problematic as well. If we are simply testing for a certain type of molecule we can find it in many places.
Current Fulvic Acid Testing Isn’t Foolproof
Faulty testing methods can be dangerous. Just ask the dairy industry.
You might remember the melamine scandal in the early 2000s. In an effort to inflate the apparent protein content of grain and infant formula, some manufacturers added melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used in plastics. Because protein tests only measured nitrogen levels, melamine made the product appear to have more protein than it did. The result? Countless pets died from adulterated pet food and infants were hospitalized.
Fulvic acid is in a similar predicament. Standard fulvic acid tests, like the ISO 19822 method, use a resin (DAX-8) to isolate “fulvic-like” compounds. But this resin isn’t specific. It binds many kinds of organic matter, including unrelated substances like malathion, lignosulfonates, and industrial byproducts. These can show up as “fulvic acid” in the lab results, even when there’s no true fulvic acid present.
Current tests are flawed because they do not measure bioactivity or look for evidence of humification. Instead they are only looking to see if a certain category of compound attaches to resin. A label might claim 40% fulvic acid at which point consumers must, unfortunately, dig deeper to uncover whether the product was extracted or synthesized to ascertain if it is truly fulvic acid or not.
But, that is not the end of the testing problem. As it stands, there is no standard fulvic acid test that spans all fifty states as there are for other agricultural products. A sample from a single source can be tested at four different labs and yield four different fulvic acid percentages. Which one is correct? Or, from a production standpoint, which percentage will allow a company to sell their version of fulvic acid at a higher price point? Not only are companies cheating the tests, they are partnering with whichever lab’s test results give the appearance of higher concentrations of fulvic acid.
Fulvic Acid in the Field
As a grower, you buy inputs expecting them to work. But if what you’ve purchased is just a byproduct from a corn plant or paper mill, something that tests like fulvic acid but hasn’t gone through humification, it won’t perform the same. Because testing is looking at molecular size, corn steep liquor, soybean digest, lignosulfonates and paper pulping residue can be used to produce a fulvic acid like product that may even impact plant growth in a positive way, but it should not be labeled as fulvic acid.
Imagine I’ve given you a box of parts to build a machine and clear instructions on how to assemble the pieces. However, instead of providing you with the flat head screwdriver you need to successfully complete the machine, I’ve given you a similar, but completely different tool; a philip’s head screwdriver. If we think about fulvic acid as a crucial tool to your growing operation, then it seems absurd to use a completely different tool and expect the exact same outcome.
In the end, it is not just growers who feel duped. These fulvic acid like products will impact the soil they are used on, the durability of the crops grown, yield sizes and overall purchase prices for consumers who could end up paying more for goods that are in short supply when they didn’t
have to be. Testing metrics have then become an economic discussion as well as a hindrance to sound scientific data collection.
How Do You Choose the Right Fulvic Acid?
Understanding that true fulvic acid must go through a humification process and can’t be replicated in a fermenter over a weekend is a good place to start. Identifying the source is important. Look for products that are mined rather than made. Any mention of corn or soybean byproducts is a dead giveaway that the company has cheated the lab test.
If you have already purchased fulvic acid a quick smell test will help determine if your product has gone through the humification process or not. True fulvic acid will smell earthy or swamp-like. Manufactured products will have a strong sulfur odor or smell sweet suggesting the origin was not long decomposed organic matter, but rather waste or byproduct material.
Don’t be dazzled by big percentage numbers. Keep in mind that some of these companies are banking on the fact that growers haven’t put in the time to understand how fulvic acid is tested in a lab. They also predict that you will make your purchasing decision based on the assumption that bigger percentages equal better quality. The percentage means nothing if the product was manufactured rather than mined.
Look for the HPTA Test Method Certified seal. This labeling is a testament to sourcing and is a signal that the product is in compliance with internationally recognized testing methods. True fulvic acid is a powerful tool in your soil health toolbox but, like real wine, it’s the product of time and transformation. Not all tests are designed to measure the transformative humification process, but the potent fulvic acid you are looking for to improve nutrient absorption and soil health is out there.
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