Chemical contamination of seeds

Seeds are increasingly coated chemically as a delivery system for chemicals and biologicals to the field and as a means of avoiding protest against excessive crop spraying. Thus chemicals enter the growing cycle at the point of planting. Time-release pesticides and fungicides on the seeds slowly leach into the soil and, from there, may be absorbed by the plant. It is predicted that after generations of seeds have been treated with chemicals, the plants are no longer able to develop a pest resistance of their own. Naturally occurring immunities are slowly eliminated from the plant.

Neonicotinoids, the most widely used insecticides, are taken up into the plant’s circulatory system as the plant grows, permeating leaf, pollen, nectar and other plant tissues. Neonicotinoids affect the central nervous system of insects, causing paralysis and death. Sublethal impacts include impaired navigation and learning. As a result, beneficial insects, valuable pollinators and birds — including threatened and endangered species protected under the US Endangered Species Act — are killed or injured. For songbirds, ingesting just one neonic-coated seed can cause serious harm or death.

Additionally, more than 80% of the pesticide coating can leave the seed, contaminating the air, soil and waterways of surrounding environments. Most notably, clouds of neonicotinoid-laced dust released during planting operations have caused mass die-offs of honeybees and wild native bees. The village of Mead, Nebraska was subjected to the fumes and runoff of an ethanol plant using coated seeds as feedstock, with eye and throat irritation and nosebleeds to local residents from the neurotoxins coating the corn seeds.

In 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a legal petition, filed in 2017, by Center for Food Safety (CFS), Pesticide Action Network of North America and others, demanding that the agency fix its failure to regulate pesticide-coated seeds, which are known to be widely harming bees and other pollinators. These crop seeds are coated with systemic insecticides known as neonicotinoids.

Crops grown from pesticide-coated seeds, such as corn, soybean and sunflower seeds cover over 150 million acres of U.S. farmland each year.