The Coffee Talk Journal · Soil

Putting the Root Zone on Trial

Humics, fulvics and inoculants all make their case at the root. Here is what NutriAg brought to Coffee Talk, how it is said to work, and the one question to carry through all of it.

October 1, 2026 · With Jeff Vanrobaeys and Aaron Haacke, NutriAg by HGS

Aaron Haacke did something you rarely hear from someone selling inoculant. He told a Thursday morning call full of farmers that, statistically, his granular performs no differently from the competition. The gap that did show up was four bushels, and it sat between using an inoculant and using nothing.

That is the right spirit for anything sold to go in below the seed. Coffee Talk on October 1, 2026 was about humics and fulvics, with NutriAg by HGS. Jeff Vanrobaeys and Aaron Haacke brought field results on humic products and inoculants, and Dean York opened it up for questions afterward.

These are a vendor's numbers, credited here to the people who gave them. They are worth hearing, and worth holding up to one question: compared to what?

What the humic trials claim

Jeff walked through about 48 replicated trials with Humic One. He reported a 90% positive yield response, with a typical gain of about 5%, across corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa.

~48
Replicated trials: 90%
Positive yield response: ~5%
Typical yield gain: Up to 25%
More key nutrients

In side-by-side fields he described more root and shoot development, an extra leaf in wheat, and plants and soil probes that came out and went in more easily. Tissue tests and soil samples showed up to 25% more of key nutrients. Active carbon was higher, and so was CO2 respiration, which he read as more microbial activity.

The number that stops you is organic matter. Jeff reported treated soils up 0.5% to over 1%, with one field moving from 5% to 6.3%.

Then there was a recent soybean yield map, with Humic LX placed through a John Deere planter and the treated green zones standing out. Aaron's explanation was the placement: right in the root zone, it makes a healthier home for beneficial microbes and for the plant. Jeff took away the job of confirming the exact yield ranges from the raw data and going to see the grower, which is the kind of follow-up you want to hear. And they said every grower who used the products this year plans to use them again next season.

Hearing it, then testing it

What was reported

A typical gain of about 5%, with 90% positive
Organic matter up 0.5% to over 1%
Up to 25% more key nutrients
Every grower plans to continue

What to ask next

Which crops, soils and years look like mine?
Over how many years, and sampled how?
Which nutrients, and did they turn into bushels?
What did their check strip do?

What is actually in the jug

It starts in the ground. Aaron said the leonardite is mined near Cuba, New Mexico, by a mining company HGS Bioscience owns, and that it is chosen for its freshwater geological origin and its preferred aromatic chemistry. The extracted humic acid is Humic LX. Dehydrate and granulate that, and you have Humic One.

Fig. 1From the seam to the seed row, as Aaron Haacke described it. One extraction, two ways onto the farm.

The point of the granule is equipment. Aaron said it breaks down about as fast as urea or MAP and runs through the dry fertilizer gear you already own, with no liquid kit to add. One grower is thinking of going the other way, from Humic One to Humic LX, to mix it with liquid fertilizer.

He put the cost at roughly $11 to $15 an acre at suggested retail, as of October 2026. That is the figure to carry home, because it turns straight into bushels.

What does it have to earn?

Put in a per-acre cost and your own grain price. The answer is the bushels an acre any input has to bring back to pay for itself.

Cost $ per acre Your grain price $ per bushel

-- bushels an acre to break even

So where do fulvics fit?

Fulvics got a short, useful answer. Jeff and Aaron described fulvic molecules as the smaller ones, which help chelate nutrients and mobilize them into the plant. Humic One and Humic LX carry a fulvic component, Aaron said. Standalone fulvic acids mostly go on as foliar amendments alongside other plant nutrients, to improve absorption and use.

Then came the question everybody wants answered: can a humic displace synthetic fertilizer? Dean and Aaron landed on this: it depends on each grower's history. Where they saw the value was in improving nutrient use efficiency.

If the claim is about the soil, you need a way to read the soil. Aaron made the case for professional agronomy help, and the talk turned up a few ways to keep score.

Four ways to keep score

1
Yield beside a check
Replicated or side by side. The trials on this call were built that way.
2
Tissue and soil samples
How the nutrient, active carbon and respiration results were read.
3
PRS probes
Aaron rated them over standard extraction methods for tracking soil supply rates, and mineralization based on temperature.
4
A water infiltration test
Simple, and raised on the call as a useful read on soil health.

Two bugs, one inoculant

The inoculant half of the talk was about the same ground. Aaron's Boss line, for pulse crops such as peas, fava beans, soybeans and dry beans, pairs Rhizobium for nitrogen fixation with Pseudomonas. The granular carries 200 million colony-forming units per gram, which he said beats standard competitors on analysis.

Pseudomonas is the interesting passenger. Aaron cited research giving it four jobs, and this is the part of the talk that is worth keeping even if you never buy a bag.

Fig. 2The four jobs Aaron Haacke credited to Pseudomonas, with Rhizobium working at the nodule.

He said field observations backed it up, with healthier root masses and strong nodulation against competitors.

Back to the four bushels

Here is the trial from the top of this post. It set granular inoculants against competitors and an uninoculated check. Aaron reported no statistically significant yield difference among the premium granular products. The check was another matter, with a statistically significant drop of four bushels.

Fig. 3Aaron Haacke's reading of the trial: the gap was inoculant or no inoculant, not brand against brand.

His pitch comes straight out of that. If Boss Granular yields the same as a competing inoculant, statistically, the difference left is cost. He put the saving at $4 to $5 an acre on inputs, a pattern he said held across formulations and crops tested in 2023 and 2024.

He also said the early flowability problems have been fixed, so product now moves through precision metering systems, and that a chickpea granular is close to registration in Canada.

Why February gets tight

One thing here outlasts any price list. Aaron said production is managed to incoming orders, not mass produced, to keep prices competitive and avoid waste. That is why product gets hard to find by the end of February. Dean gave credit for it: product made fresh each year, with strong backup capacity.

Worth keeping

Anything sold for the root zone should answer one question: compared to what?
Divide the cost per acre by your grain price. Now you know what it has to earn.
In the trial shown here, the gap was inoculant or none, not brand against brand.
Made-to-order biologicals make pulse acres a fall conversation.