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The five biggest lies and eight deceits in the fertilizer industry! Author/Source: Date: 2016-10-31 Clicks: 7 In recent years, there have been various forms of \"conceptual\" marketing, \"misleading\" marketing, \"false\" marketing, and marketing based on fabricated claims regarding new types of fertilizers; many of these tactics are intended to deceive farmers and constitute clear illegal activities. We are now sharing with distributors and farmers some of the common tactics and deceptive practices used in fake and substandard fertilizers, so that they can be cautious and avoid being deceived. I. Foliar spraying is sufficient; no base fertilizer or top-dressing is needed. The person who came up with this idea is truly audacious and reckless! To use Xiao Yueyue’s words: “utterly shameless!” At present, it is not possible to meet all of a plant’s nutritional needs solely through foliar fertilization; foliar fertilizers can only be used as a very minor means of supplementation (accounting for less than 5% of the total fertilization applied during the entire growth period)! The most commonly used ones at present are nitrogen fertilizers, calcium fertilizers, iron fertilizers, etc. II. Many scammers in the field of biofertilizers As a rapidly developing type of fertilizer, biofertilizers have become a target for various scammers! All kinds of so-called \"specialized bacterial strains\" keep emerging. Common scams include: 1. Using organic fertilizers to pass off as biofertilizers! All organic fertilizers are labeled as containing beneficial bacteria, while genuine microbial fertilizers come with national standard certification numbers; fake biofertilizers often use the certification numbers assigned to organic fertilizers – namely those issued by the Ministry of Agriculture. 2. The types of bacteria are increasing more and more – 26 types of bacteria, 28 types! There are very few biofertilizers on the market that contain 5 or more beneficial microbial strains. Experts from the Ministry of Agriculture recommend that biofertilizers should not contain more than 3 types of microorganisms! 3. The number of bacteria keeps increasing beyond the acceptable level! An excessive number of bacteria leads to two problems: one is an increase in costs ； Second is the adverse impact of excessive microorganisms on crops, such as inhibiting growth. However, farmers needn’t worry about them adding too many bacteria; what they should worry about is whether functional bacteria have been added! III. The chaos surrounding water-soluble fertilizers 1. \"Imported from abroad\" is currently the most common marketing slogan; those that are not imported seem too embarrassing to mention! In fact, over 90% of the so-called imported water-soluble fertilizers are actually 100% domestically produced! Their real goal is to sell them at high prices under the guise of imports! Not only water-soluble fertilizers – in recent years, some so-called compound fertilizers with fancy labels have also used this same trick; their prices are extremely high, reaching around 350 yuan per 100 jin, which is simply robbery! 2. These days, it’s embarrassing not to use water-soluble fertilizers that contain chelated trace elements! The amount of truly chelated elements in such fertilizers is minimal, as you can imagine! 3. Hormone-based fertilizers are widespread! Some farmers use fertilizers that show results within 12 hours. As a result, he removed the tomato plants from his greenhouse at the end of April, while others didn’t do so until June! Remember that most hormonal fertilizers have an irritating odor! 4. Various \"potassium fertilizers\" are spreading across the market! Potassium fertilizers are used for top-dressing during the fruit expansion stage. As we all know, potassium is relatively expensive; therefore, some of these fertilizers are simply named \"XX potassium.\" Such fertilizers often claim to be \"potassium humate\" or \"high-potassium\" products, but if you check their certification numbers, you’ll find that many of them actually have certifications related to trace elements – meaning the potassium content in them is very low! IV. Apply fertilizer once only, no additional fertilization needed. This approach is widely used by various fraudsters and small-scale manufacturers; they take advantage of people’s desire to save labor, effort, and money. What’s even worse is that these fraudsters often use fake, low-quality high-nitrogen fertilizers to pass them off as fertilizers with high potassium content, promoting the idea that only an initial application of fertilizer is necessary, with no further fertilization required later on. As a result, after application by farmers, yields and tree vigor declined significantly, causing substantial direct economic losses; in fruit-growing areas, the harmful effects persist for 2–3 years! Farmers should keep in mind the following: 1. Crops have different nutrient requirements at various stages of growth; therefore, it is difficult to find a single type of fertilizer that can meet the needs of crops at all these stages. For example, fruit trees require large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus in spring, while they need more potassium during the fruit-swelling phase. Thus, it is better to use fertilizers with appropriate compositions at different stages 2. The effect of chemical fertilizers in the soil is relatively rapid; it is currently difficult to achieve a slow-release effect that lasts for more than half a year. For the cultivation methods used in northern China, the approach of \"using small amounts frequently\" is suitable for all types of soil! V. Deception: The “matted” fertilizer is actually a biological fertilizer containing live bacteria. It should be noted that: 1. With very few exceptions involving actinomycete-based products, common biological fertilizers do not develop such matting during normal storage. The products that show this matting phenomenon are organic fertilizers that have not been fully fermented; in high-temperature and high-humidity conditions, large amounts of harmful fungi grow in them! 2. It is precisely because of the large amount of \"long hair\" that no \"functional bacteria\" are added to this product; moreover, its moisture content is likely to be too high, posing a risk of damaging the seedlings! 3. Common microbial agents contain \"spore-forming bacteria\"; when they multiply in large numbers, they form \"colonies\". When used as fertilizer, they will not grow hair! They won’t grow hair! They won’t grow hair! 4. Common fertilizers with excessive “hairlike” growth are actually infested with miscellaneous microorganisms, namely fungi! Many of these are harmful fungi belonging to the Pythium genus! There are also these huge deceptions, which have devastated the farmers! ! In recent years, overcapacity in the fertilizer industry has led to fierce competition in the agricultural supplies market. Companies have gone all out in their efforts: packaging has evolved from black and white to colored designs, and marketing strategies range from text-based promotions to endorsements by famous figures – each company using its own unique tactics to stand out. The farmer then wondered, how much money are you actually making from a bag of fertilizer? Why don’t the advertisements on CCTV work either? There are countless fertilizer manufacturers across the country, and among them there are always those that do not focus on improving the quality of their fertilizers; instead, they try to create misleading concepts in order to make big profits by deception. As a farmer, how can one not be cautious? Deception tactic 1: Swapping horses. By taking advantage of farmers’ acceptance of certain fertilizers such as diammonium phosphate, this tactic involves inventing the notion that something is actually another thing – in this case, thrips are referred to as \"horses\" – and giving them names like triammonium, tetrammonium, pentammonium, thereby misleading farmers through misrepresentation. Deception No. 2: Swapping one type of birdseed for another. Especially in local agricultural supply stores, in order to make huge profits, organic and inorganic compound fertilizers are sold; their total content is high, but the concentration of effective nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium is low. These products are sold as compound fertilizers at a price slightly lower than that of actual compound fertilizers – it’s like selling sparrows as peacocks, cheating farmers in the same way as deceiving ordinary people. It’s better to be a big liar; at least a horse is still a horse. Deception No. 3: Swapping monkeys. They come up with absurdly complicated terms that even the senior brother can’t understand, such as imported nanomagnetic agents, activators, photonic compounds, anti-freezing factors, sun protection factors, long-lasting agents and other so-called miraculous substances, in order to deceive people. Not all monkeys are called senior brothers. Deception No. 4: Swapping wolves with fake ones. Some manufacturers use binary fertilizers to pass them off as tertiary fertilizers. Although it contains only nitrogen and phosphorus, the packaging indicates values such as “Nitrogen: 15, Phosphorus: 15, Copper, Zinc, Iron, Manganese, etc.: 15”, giving the impression of it being a triple-nutrient fertilizer. Is a weasel also considered a wolf? Are farmers that easy to deceive? Deception No. 5: Swapping a snake for a dragon. It’s clearly just a shrewd snake, but they insist on giving it horns to make it pass off as a dragon. All elements, multi-functional, fully nutritious, suitable for all crops, specialized for certain crops – a whole bunch of such terms. An item that costs one dollar can become an item worth several dollars just by attaching a few labels to it. Deception No. 6: Swapping dogs with fake ones. Fertilizers labeled as containing 48% or more nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium actually contain only 10%-24% nitrogen; by selling such fake products, sellers can earn at least a thousand yuan more per ton than if they sold genuine products. Conscience has been devoured by dogs; Pekingese are sold at the price of Tibetan mastiffs. Deception No. 7: Swapping one tiger for another. Inferior products are packaged as if they were “products recommended by certain organizations” or “products approved by certain quality inspection agencies” – is a gecko considered a tiger as well? Deception No. 8: Swapping ants for elephants. These are high-quality imitation products of brands such as urea and diammonium fertilizers; in reality, they use lower concentrations to pass off as higher ones, replace cheaper fertilizers with more expensive ones, and even fake local products as foreign brands by imitating the trademarks of imported fertilizers or using similar names ； Using the name of foreign manufacturers or indicating terms such as “import license” ； First, register a virtual offshore shell company, and then use that shell company to commission enterprises to carry out production ； Phishing for foreign-tech products, falsely claiming imported raw materials, and similar practices. (Agricultural Inputs Market Network)