Southern Humates and Regenerative Farming
We’ve been hearing a lot about the benefits of adding humates to fertliser applications as we read the many articles on regenerative farming. There is a mood afoot to embrace regenerative farming practices so what are humates and why are they being promoted as an essential addition to fertiilser plans.
Humate is a pure form of organic matter. It is an accumulation of partially decayed forest and other carbon-rich plant residues that have been compressed and preserved over the ages.
These humate deposits are high in carbon, natural minerals and trace elements, and are referred to as humic substances. They also contain two very powerful bioactive acids: humic acid and fulvic acid.
Humic acids biologically stimulate plants and activities of micro-organism which encourages the following benefits:
- Stimulates plant enzymes and increases their production
- Stimulates growth and proliferation of desirable micro-organisms in soil
- Enhances plant’s natural resistance against diseases and pesticides
- Stimulates root growth, especially vertically and enables better nutrient uptake
- Increases vitamin and mineral content of the plants
- Thickens cell walls in fruit and prolongs their storage and shelf time
- Increases germination and viability of the seeds
- Stimulates plant growth
- Increases quality of yields: improves their physical appearance and nutritional value
By just using fertilizers, we can’t reach maximum crop yields. Maximum yields require organic matter humic acid, high cation exchange capacity and biological activity.
Soil pH affects many chemical and biological reactions. It is an important parameter for plant nutrition – in high acidity, absorption of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, calcium diminishes; in high alkaline conditions, absorption of iron, manganese, boron, copper and zinc decreases.
Humic acid buffers soil pH to 5.5 to 7.5 levels which is ideal for plant development and nutrients absorption. Thus acting as a natural chelator, they help plant roots to absorb nutrients more efficiently to create long term positive effect on soil quality and productivity. In comparison, conventional chemical fertilizers only show short term effects without any plus benefits on soil structure and soil productivity.
Extensive field trials have proven the addition of southern humates increases pasture growth by 23%. These results being published in Nature Science Journal. Not all humates are equal and we find that Southern Humates is high in humic acid 46% which contributes to the positive results when Southern Humates are applied as a solid or in a liquid form.
