As George stated in his last article, carbon is the basis of all life. In this article series George has also shared information about God’s perfect design for the soil ecosystem and how man-made chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia have had detrimental effects on our soil health. There are many carbon products on the market that are positioned as the answer to these problems. But here’s the issue: they’re not all created equal. Some may not even be worth the jugs they’re bottled in, while other carbon products can actually transform your agronomy program and enable you to cut back on other synthetic inputs. 

Unprocessed Carbon Has No Agronomic Value

I’d like to talk about my own journey of discovery with carbon products. To recap from one of the other articles in this series, I’m a long-time Florida citrus grower. In areas like mine, we don’t have animals—pigs and cattle, for example—like farmers in the Corn Belt have; at least not on a commercial scale. That would provide manure for my crops. We also don’t have the ability or desire to grow big fields of hay or clover in Florida, which would make a compost-type product we could apply to the soil. 

As elsewhere, what we have had is an overabundance of man-made synthetic fertilizers and chemicals applied to our soils. One other option are the so-called humic products, which have been around for hundreds of years in Europe and other places. It’s an old, ancient product. All carbon products come out of the ground in what I call a “native” state. That is, they’ve never been activated. This would be no different than if you took a bag of charcoal briquettes for your grill and ground them up into a powder. This type of carbon has absolutely no agronomic value. Raw carbon is not biologically available; it does not have the properties necessary to feed the soil biology. 

Processing and pH: Gauging a Product's Agronomic Value

When I first began creating my own carbon-based products way back in 2005, I knew I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) market raw carbon. The carbon we use has been activated. There are four ways or chemical processes you can use to activate carbon, potassium hydroxide among them, which is what we use at CarbonWorks. 

Every once and a while I’ll ask a farmer to compare a couple of my products: a foliar spray, which is clear, and another one that’s pretty much dark brown or black. I’ll ask him, which one has more carbon? People always gravitate toward the dark one. And then I will tell them that, in this case, that’s not correct. The clear product has more carbon in it than the dark one and they’re mystified. And then I ask the farmer if his wife has a diamond ring. What is the hardest, clearest carbon on Earth? A diamond, which is more valuable the clearer it is. Now, my clear product isn’t crushed up diamonds, in case you’re wondering, but it is pure carbon. 

You may have heard the term fulvic acid, which actually is an acid, with a pH of around 3.5. It’s a derivative of humin. It comes from the same molecule of raw carbon that the humin did, but companies use a different extraction process—a much longer, more complicated process. The companies that make these products will tell you that fulvic acids have more agronomic value than humic acids because they do have energy and a positive oxygen level. 

Now humic acid, which is another product you may have heard about, is a total misnomer. Never in eighteen years have I seen a humic substance with a pH below nine. So, the humic acid, which actually has a high pH, will have a negative oxygen level. CarbonWorks’ products have a pH of around two. I add a tremendous amount of energy to my carbon base to make our products. 

CarbonWorks: Delivering More than Carbon

I like to say that my products are carbon trucks that deliver energy and molecular oxygen. We’ve already talked about the importance of oxygen to life. CarbonWorks’ humic products have an ultra-low pH, so they carry a lot of hydrogen energy. And then, they also have positive molecular oxygen. Have you ever wondered what pH stands for? Potential of hydrogen. Any pH below seven has more positive hydrogen ions. If you’re above seven, you have more negative hydroxide ions. More simply, below seven you have an acid; above seven you have a base. 

That’s why I was so confused when I first went out to California and they told me they had a humic acid product. I stuck a pH meter in it and it read a pH of over twelve. So I asked them, why do you call this stuff an acid? And they basically said, we don’t know, that’s just what everybody calls it. 

So I’ve spent a number of years figuring out how best to utilize carbon on farms across the country. Yes, I leaned on my engineering background, but I also focused on God’s blessings and how he’s designed nature to work. I think it’s important to incorporate that in our agronomy plans. If we align ourselves more with the way God designed nature to work, if we’re a little more respectful of this design, it will work for you on your farm, whether you believe in God or not. When we try to overcome nature, we put ourselves on a path to failure. 

Buyer Beware: Why the Carbon Market is the Wild West

The problem lurking over this whole discussion, however, is that there are zero regulations or standards in the carbon world. There are no guidelines. Anyone can say anything they want about a product or make any claim they want. This has been the challenge I’ve had to deal with. 

From 2005 to 2010 I was traveling all over the United States learning about carbon and its potential. I predominantly found it out west, from California up to Idaho and Washington State. They’ve been using carbon products out there for fifty or sixty years. Now, twenty years later, carbon products have become more common, but they’re still not mainstream. One of the reasons is, I believe, that farmers don’t understand what it is and what it can do. The second reason is, as I just alluded to, it’s the wild west out there when it comes to the claims made by some of the companies that produce these products. 

When shopping for carbon products, there are a couple of items that top my “buyer beware” list.

1. Raw, unprocessed carbon is completely worthless to your farm. It has no agronomic value. If you're looking for the cheapest carbon in the market, there's a good chance that every dollar you invest will be a dollar wasted.
2. Companies will try to one-up each other as to who has the most carbon in their products. Some will claim that they have greater than sixteen percent humic; I’ve seen as high as forty and I saw one company claiming one hundred percent humic in a product. Most humics are between six and twelve percent humic. If you had a humic that was greater than sixteen percent, it would be like a can of BlackJack roofing cement; you wouldn’t be able to get it out of the container. When I hear a company claim more than sixteen percent humic in its product I think, ‘well, okay, what other stories are you going to tell me today’.   

How to Source Carbon Products that Actually Work

How do you navigate a marketplace that has no product regulations in place? I tell farmers to look for companies that have a positive track record, or a track record, period. Look for companies that have third-party independent data that’s shown consistent positive results over multiple years. Even if you just use these requirements, you would quickly eliminate a whole bunch of fly-by-night companies that love to make wild unfounded claims—the snake oil people. 

You also have to be careful with the companies that lean on customer testimonials. You don’t know who these people are, what their backgrounds are, or whether they’re being forthright or not. I love sharing success stories from my customers when appropriate, but I have data to back up the field-level insights. 

I find that I have to work extra-hard when bringing my products to farmers because I’m offering products that don’t come from their traditional sources—their co-op or seed dealer or whoever handles their other inputs. 

CarbonWorks: Tested, Tried, Delivered

I submitted two of my CarbonWorks products to the USDA in 2013 for chemical testing. The USDA had a voluntary program, called the Biologically Available Carbon Program, that was administered by Iowa State University. The USDA created the program to bring some visibility to some of these so-called ‘green’ carbon products. And so, my products are actually USDA certified as having biologically available carbon. I actually have a symbol that I can put on my product labels that certify that I’m part of that program. It’s one way of giving farmers some confidence that I’m not a snake oil guy and that I didn’t cook this stuff up in a bathtub last night. 

Up Next . . .

Let’s say that you’re intrigued by the idea of using an activated carbon product to help restore balance to your soils. Yes, you want to look for products, like those sold by CarbonWorks, that use an activated carbon that’s biologically available. But how do you actually incorporate them into your agronomy plan? Are they safe to apply with other chemicals? What kind of results can you expect? In his next article, George shares his strategy for introducing CarbonWorks products to a farm. Even if your soils are as black and rich as they come, it still pays to incorporate a carbon product in your agronomy program.