When Is a Pesticide Not a Pesticide? When It Coats a Seed (1)

If you apply a chemical to a field of crops, either from a sprayer towed behind a tractor or from above, by an aerial crop duster, that is considered a pesticide.

However, if you take that same chemical and coat it on a seed, then plant that seed in the ground, it ceases to be pesticide—at least according to government regulators.

This issue of how to define a pesticide is at the center of a growing battle over a regulatory loophole that allows seeds coated with chemicals to be considered “treated articles,” rather than pesticides.

“That exemption has had devastating ...