These past few years there are more options for treating soybean seeds. You can now buy soybean seed that is treated with any or all of an inoculant, fungicide and or insecticide.
Ontario on-farm-trials indicate that inoculants give better than one bu/ac yield increase. Fungicides and insecticides also increase yields by about one to 1.2 bu/ac for both fungicides and insecticides. So the answer is yes.
If you have planted treated seed in the past then keep planting it. If you have not planted treated seed before then try some this year.
One benefit from treating soybean seed with an insecticide will come from a reduced seeding rate. Insecticide treated seed generally gives about 10,000 more plants per acre. (Information from OMAFRA on-farm-trials) Thus you can possibly reduce your seeding rate to pay for the increased cost of seed.
To effectively reduce your seeding rate you must know two things: You must know what your current seeding rate is, and you must know what your final stand is. I have asked many growers what their final stand is. They generally tell me their seeding rate. When I have checked stand count there is seldom a co-relation between what growers thought they planted and what they ended up with. Sometimes there are more plants than what the grower thought they planted.
A scale on the drill increases your chance of seeding the rate you want.
As we continue growing soys there are two things that will happen. You will have more choices as to what treatment you can apply to soybean seed. You will also pay more for a set number of soybean seeds. One way to prepare for this is to figure how you can maintain yields and reduce seeding rates. Seed treatments are one way to help meet this objective. BF