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Why I Am Saying No to Treated Seed

Living Ground has already been sprouting alfalfa, mung bean and sunflower at the café, and we have also been freeze-drying the sprouts into these ridiculously good little crunchy packets of nutrition. Now we are ready to expand and we are in investigative and research mode.

We are testing broccoli, carrot, onion and radish, and I am also interested in taking this into medicinal plants. Dandelion is being tested now, burdock is on my list, and there are quite a few others I want to experiment with as we learn how they germinate, how they taste at different stages and whether they make sense as something we can grow for the café and offer to clients.

I love sprouts because they turn a small amount of seed, water and a few days into fresh living food rich in vitamins, minerals, enzymes and phytonutrients. They are inexpensive, need almost no space or equipment, and could be a valuable tool in places where fresh food is scarce, helping bridge the gap between simply having calories and having real nutrition.

We are testing how different seeds germinate, how they taste at different stages, which growing methods work best and what happens during those first days of life. What I did not expect was how difficult it would be to find untreated seed, and the deeper I dig into why, the more pissed I am becoming.

I need larger quantities of untreated seed. We are harvesting our own and I have some smaller growers and local contacts where we currently stock up. But, we need large quantities as I am thinking big. As I researched, I kept getting essentially the same response: the seeds are treated. In some cases, I have been told that practically everything they sell is treated. I think this is wrong, and the deeper I look into it, the stronger I feel about it.

We need to look at a seed differently

A dry seed can look almost inert. Add water and within hours an enormous amount of activity begins. It is quite a miracle.

Water enters the seed and metabolism wakes up. Enzymes activate, stored compounds begin breaking down, cells reorganize and the embryo pushes out its first root. During these first few days, the young plant is still living largely on carbohydrates, proteins, oils and minerals that were packed into the seed by the mother plant to carry it through germination and early growth.

Over the next few days, the first seed leaves open and photosynthesis begins taking over as the young plant becomes less dependent on those stored reserves. That makes those first days of sprouting fascinating. We are eating a plant at the exact stage when everything the mother plant placed into the seed is being unpacked, transformed and used to build new tissue.

And somebody wants me to start that process with a chemically treated seed? NO WAY!

The Seed Has Its Own Microbiome

This is the part that really changes the whole conversation for me. A seed is not carrying only the future plant. It also carries microorganisms on its surface and within its tissues, and some of those microbes can move from the parent plant into the seed and then into the developing seedling. It is much like a baby in utero and during the birthing process being gifted the microbial hard drive of the parent, the biological foundation of its developing immune system.

Researchers following bean and radish seeds through germination found that the seed itself can be one of the first sources of the young plant’s microbiome. Some of these microbial relationships can even be passed from one plant generation to the next.

So when that seed begins to germinate, it is not starting alone. It brings its own biology with it, and then that biology meets the microorganisms in the soil. For me, that makes chemically treating the seed before those relationships even begin a very serious question.

The First Root Enters a Microbial World

When the first root emerges, it is not simply pushing into soil to absorb nutrients. Around the germinating seed is the spermosphere, and as the root develops, the rhizosphere forms around it. These are intensely active biological zones where the seed and young root release sugars, carbon compounds and other substances that feed and influence the microbial community around them.

So the plant is already communicating with the soil from the beginning. The microbes carried by the seed meet the microbes living in the soil, and those early relationships begin helping shape the young plant’s microbiome and its access to nutrients.

This is what bothers me so much about treated seed. The chemical coating is sitting directly on the seed, exactly where water enters, germination begins and the first root emerges. If that seed is planted into living soil, the treatment is being introduced right at the point where the plant and the soil food web are beginning their relationship. For me, that is the wrong place to interfere.

So, Where Does the Seed Treatment Actually Go?

Not every seed coating is the same, and some are now being developed to carry beneficial microbes directly to the emerging root, which I find fascinating. The problem is not the idea of coating a seed. The problem is what is being put onto it.

With some systemic seed treatments, only a small percentage of the active compound is actually taken up by the growing plant. Reviews have reported uptake as low as about 1.6 to 20 percent in some systems, meaning much of the treatment can remain in the surrounding soil, move with water or come into contact with organisms living around the root zone.

That is where I have a real problem with this. We put enormous effort into building living soil, making compost, protecting organic matter and encouraging the microbial relationships around roots. Then we take a chemically treated seed and place it directly into that biology, at the exact point where water activates the seed and the first root begins interacting with the soil. It makes no sense to me to build a living system so carefully and then introduce something that may interfere with it before the plant has even had a chance to establish itself.

Researchers Are Finding Changes in Soil Microbial Communities

Research is now starting to show that treated seed can change the microbial community in the soil. In one three-year corn and soybean study, soil type, plant species and time had the biggest influence, but the seed treatment still produced measurable changes. Researchers found shifts in bacterial community composition, a temporary reduction in bacterial diversity and declines in some groups involved in plant growth and nitrogen cycling.

That does not mean a treated seed wipes out the soil microbiome. Biology is far more resilient and complicated than that. But it does show that the treatment does not simply stay on the seed and affect only its intended target. It can influence the very organisms we are trying to build and protect in a living soil system, and for me that is reason enough to question why this has become standard practice.

And, the Mycorrhizal Question Bothers Me Even More

Mycorrhizal fungi form direct relationships with plant roots, extending far beyond the root itself and helping the plant access water and nutrients in exchange for carbon. They are an important part of how plants connect into the wider soil food web.

Recent studies have found that some chemical seed coatings can interfere with that early relationship. A 2026 maize study found reduced mycorrhizal spore germination, changes in early colonization benefits and shifts in community composition. A 2025 wheat study also found delays in mycorrhizal root colonization, especially under controlled conditions.

What interests me is that living soil softened some of these effects in field studies. A diverse soil community has an incredible ability to buffer disturbance, but to me that is not permission to keep disturbing it. It is a very good reason to protect the complexity that gives soil that resilience in the first place.

For Sprouts, My Answer Is Much Simpler

For sprouts, this becomes very straightforward because we are eating the plant only days after germination. The seed leaves are still present, parts of the seed coat may still be attached, and the young plant is still using the reserves stored inside the seed as it begins photosynthesis.

I do not want commercially treated agricultural seed anywhere near that food. Actually, Canadian seed regulations make the distinction very clearly: treated seed must be identified, and certain treated seeds carry warnings that they are not to be used for food or feed. If a seed is specifically marked so people do not eat it, I am certainly not going to sprout it for a few days and then put it on someone’s plate.

And this is where sprouts make the whole issue impossible for me to ignore. We are not planting a treated seed and harvesting something months later after rain, soil, roots and an entire growing season have intervened. We are wetting that seed today and eating what emerges from it a few days later. The seed itself is still very much part of the food. Once I understood that, untreated seed stopped being a preference for our sprouting program. It became a requirement.

Then I Was Sent the Ecuador Seed Report

During my search for untreated seeds, a supplier sent an August 2026 Ecuadorian report on phytosanitary risk in imported vegetable seed. (shared in this article).

The concern is legitimate, I suppose: seeds can carry organisms from one region into another, so the report recommends checking origin, production history and documentation, then using representative sampling and laboratory testing before deciding what to do with a lot. Treatment is only one option alongside release, rejection, re-export or further controls.

I have no problem with keeping contaminated seed out of Ecuador. What I question is the leap from clean seed to chemically treated seed, especially when the report itself actually says not to assume that treatment eliminates viruses, viroids or infections carried inside the seed. Huh?

If that is the case, test the seed, know where it came from, know the grower, know the lot and build proper traceability. I can support all of that without accepting chemical treatment as the normal starting point for agriculture.

We have made untreated seeds difficult to find. This is what keeps bothering me. Untreated seed should not be the unusual product passed around through small growers and private contacts while chemically treated seed dominates the commercial market. A farmer, gardener or food producer should be able to buy clean, untreated seed without having to hunt for it.

When nearly all commercial seed arrives already treated, the grower has lost the choice. No one gets to decide whether that treatment is appropriate for that soil, that crop or those growing conditions because the decision was made before the seed ever reached the farm. I don’t want that decision made for me, and it is certainly not how I want to grow food.

I Want to Begin with Biology

We work hard at Living Ground to build living soil. Compost, organic matter, roots, microbes, fungi, minerals, water and plant diversity are all part of the same system, and the seed belongs inside that system too. It arrives carrying stored food, genetic information and microbial inheritance, then water wakes it up and the first root enters another living community.

For a sprout grower, we harvest right in the middle of that transition. For a farmer, those first days help establish the foundation for the entire plant. I cannot see any good reason to begin either process with a chemical treatment already wrapped around the seed, especially when we are trying so hard to build and protect the biology around it.

So our search for untreated seed continues. We are looking for broccoli, alfalfa, radish, onion, carrot, dandelion, burdock and other medicinal plants, and we are finding growers, asking questions and looking at who may be able to produce larger quantities for us. We may even end up growing far more of our own seed, which is starting to feel less like an inconvenience and more like another important piece of food sovereignty.

This investigation began because I wanted to grow more sprouts at the Project. It has turned into something much bigger: a hard look at what has happened to our seed supply and how easily we have accepted the idea that a living seed should come to us already chemically treated. I do not accept that as normal, and I do not want it to become normal here.

I want clean seed. I want living soil. I want the biology intact from the beginning, and I want growers to have the right to choose what they put into their soil and onto the food they produce. If untreated seed has become difficult to find, then perhaps it is time we start rebuilding the systems that make it available again.

What bothers me is how quietly this choice has disappeared. Somewhere along the way, chemically treated seed became the default and untreated seed became something you have to specifically search for. That means the decision about how a seed begins its life is increasingly being made by the seed industry, not by the person growing the food.

There is a larger pattern here that I keep seeing in agriculture. We encounter a biological problem and our response is often to simplify the biology, control it or remove as much uncertainty as possible. Yet healthy soil works because of complexity. A healthy plant is not separate from its microbes, and a healthy seed is not separate from the biology it carries. Perhaps the answer is not to keep stripping these systems down and then trying to protect what remains. Perhaps we need to get much better at working with the living system in the first place.

If I am responsible for building the soil, choosing the compost, caring for the microbes and feeding that plant, I should also be able to decide what enters that system on the seed.

Alfalfa Sprouts Fresh – Brotes de Alfalfa

Research and Sources

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