Since the 1950s, farmers across the world have used chemical treatments of their seeds to protect them from pests, pathogens, and disease. The downside of this practice has been negative impacts on human health and the environment. A new chemical-free treatment, however, has been developed, thoroughly tested, and widely deployed in Scandinavia, gaining mainstream use there. Seeds are treated with steam rather than chemicals.
ThermoSeed, the Swedish company that has pioneered this biological innovation, uses intense bursts of steam to pasteurize seeds. It discovered that different types of seeds have different optimum requirements for humidity, temperature, and exposure times. Consequently, it has developed a tailored recipe for each type of seed. This pasteurization process has proven to deliver yields comparable to, or even better than, traditional chemical seed treatment.
Initially, ThermoSeeds were only used by organic farmers, but within half a dozen years, they started making inroads into conventional farming. Farmers tend to be wary of innovations, especially of non-chemical solutions, so the process of adoption has been relatively slow. A Swedish agricultural co-op that supplies about half of Sweden’s seeds adopted the steam seed treatment in 2008, and Norway’s large co-op got on board in 2011. In Sweden alone, an estimated 3,000 cubic meters of chemicals have been avoided.