Applying an electric field to soil affects more than just the plant growing in it — it changes the soil itself. Two mechanisms do most of the work: electromigration, where charged nutrient ions move through the soil toward the electrode of opposite charge, and electro-osmosis, where water itself moves through soil pores under the influence of the field, carrying dissolved nutrients with it. Together, these mean nutrients don’t have to be broadcast evenly across a field to reach a plant’s roots — they can be moved to where they’re needed.
Research cited in Electric Fertilizer’s own historical writing (Wang Yaqin et al., in a 2004 study on electrokinetic soil treatment) reported that electric fields increased soil aggregate size — larger soil particle clusters create more pore space for air and water, which makes it easier for roots to grow and improves oxygenation. The same electrochemical reactions at soil-water boundaries have also been reported to increase soil oxygen levels through electrolysis.
Soil bacteria are affected too: research on bacterial response to electric fields has found that bacteria carry their own electric charge, can be moved through soil via electro-osmosis and electrophoresis, and show increased reproduction rates under field exposure — relevant to nitrogen-fixing bacteria like Rhizobium, which forms the root nodules that supply nitrogen to legumes.
What this doesn’t establish: none of this is a claim that electrified soil universally outperforms unelectrified soil by any specific amount — the magnitude of these effects depends heavily on soil type, moisture, field strength, and duration, none of which is standardized across the sources cited here. Treat this as a real, cited mechanism explanation, not a yield guarantee.
See Plant Electrophysiology for how these soil-level effects connect to changes inside the plant itself, and Earth Batteries for one historical way of generating the field in the first place.