Seed
Collaborative

A producers’ collaborative

Straw wall panels, made near the place you’re building

We are a network of straw panel manufacturers, designers, and installers who chose collaboration over competition — because it gets more healthy, low-carbon homes built, in more places, by the people who live there.

Request panels What the panels are
Inside a house under construction: straw panel walls, exposed roof framing, and a wide window opening onto a harvested field

What we’re for

Making straw construction ordinary

Spread far enough and fast enough that a straw wall becomes a normal thing to put up in a normal town, made by the people who live there.

We are not the only ones doing this work, and we are glad we are not. We intend to get there without exploiting the people who build, the farms we buy from, or the land it all stands on.

There is no patent on this, and no one owns the practice. Members fund the Collaborative between them, and it belongs to them. Beyond that, we ask of each other what we ask of ourselves: that the detailing is right and the wall is built properly — something our founders have spent their careers building, researching, and refining.

Meet the manufacturers
A Seed Program cohort of eleven people standing and kneeling together in a fabrication shop

Find your way in

Where would you like to start?

The panels

Dimensions, R-values, weight, engineering routes, durability, and what raising them involves on site.

Specifications

The manufacturers

Who makes the panels, where they are, and which regions are coming online next.

The network

Pre-designed homes

Start from a plan somebody has already built, and have it made by the manufacturer nearest you.

See the models

Making panels yourself

The Seed Program, what starting a shop takes, and the architects’ and builders’ circles.

Join the network

Our commitments

Six things every member does

Not principles on a wall. These are the terms of belonging, and each one shows up in what arrives on your site.

We refuse the trade-off between low carbon and high performance.
Straw stores more carbon per wall than any other natural insulation on the market, and a 14.5-inch panel gives an R-38 assembly. Natural materials, and a wall that outperforms what it replaces. We don’t give up either one to get the other.
We build to the drawing, exactly.
Panels are fabricated indoors to tight tolerances and inspected before they leave the shop, with straw moisture confirmed. Moisture is what decides whether a straw wall lasts a century, so it’s quality-controlled end to end — and first-time builders get the drawings, the guides, and the manufacturer on the phone until it’s up.
We treat the trades as skilled work, and pay accordingly.
Fair wages, extensive and ongoing training, and safe, inclusive shops for the crews fabricating panels and raising walls. Panel work is precise, and precision comes from people who are trained, paid, and intend to still be doing this in ten years.
We buy from farms and mills close to the shop.
Straw from small local growers and timber sourced as locally as the project allows, so the farms and mills nearby have a buyer they can count on, season after season.
We teach the method, because it was taught to us.
Nobody here invented building with straw; a century of farmers, builders, and researchers worked out how to do it well and published what they learned instead of patenting it. Construction has to shift to low-carbon materials fast enough and widely enough to matter against the climate crisis — but you don’t grow anything reliably by broadcasting seed and walking away. Each manufacturer that comes through the Seed Program is planted deliberately and tended until it stands on its own.
What one manufacturer learns, every manufacturer gets.
The detail that solved a stubborn corner, the jig that halved a step — it goes back to the Collaborative and out to everyone. Which is why the newest manufacturer starts further along than the first one did, and why your project gets nine manufacturers’ worth of experience rather than one.
3

Manufacturers active today, in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Missouri.

6

More manufacturers setting up, from Maryland to Washington State.

14.5″

Panel thickness, giving an R-38 wall assembly.

1

Method, held in common and passed between manufacturers through the Seed Program.

A completed straw wall panel on a shop table, straw visible between the timber studs

What we make

A wall that arrives already insulated

Straw from nearby farms, pressed into prefabricated wall panels at 14.5 inches thick for an R-38 assembly. Structure and insulation arrive as one component, built indoors to your drawings and delivered stacked in the order the walls go up — no bales stacked by hand, no specialist crew required.

The straw drew carbon out of the air while it grew. Built into a wall and kept dry, it stays there for the life of the building.

  • 14.5″thickness
  • R-38wall assembly
  • 350 lbstandard panel
Panel specifications

How the network works

A network, not a franchise

New Frameworks spent nearly two decades in natural building before turning entirely to prefabricated straw panels — and kept the fabrication deliberately simple, so that everyday carpenters could build it rather than a production line. Then they began teaching it, through the Seed Program.

Every manufacturer in the Collaborative came through that training, and every manufacturer still owns itself. Its own name, its own crew, its own region. What they hold together is the method and everything learned since: monthly calls, shared research, design worked through in company rather than alone.

Which is the whole point. A problem solved once in Vermont should not have to be solved again in Colorado, and a technique this useful should not depend on any one company staying in business.

How the Seed Program works
Three workers in ear defenders and dust masks pressing straw into a timber panel frame Finished straw panels stacked in a fabrication shop A crew raising straw panel walls on a rural site

How to buy

One door, several manufacturers

The Collaborative doesn’t run a factory. Our members do, and each serves the projects within reach of its own workshop. Straw panels are heavy, and shipping a wall across the country would undo a good part of what makes it worth building. So the answer isn’t one big plant — it’s several independent manufacturers, each close to the work. Which leaves one question worth answering for you.

  1. Tell us where you’re building.
    Location, rough size, and where the project is up to. A sketch is enough to start.
  2. We point you to the nearest manufacturer.
    Based on haul distance, capacity, and what your project actually needs.
  3. You work with that manufacturer directly.
    They quote it, build it, and deliver it. We stay in reach if you want a second pair of eyes on the detailing.
  4. Nobody nearby yet?
    We’ll tell you straight, and talk through the options — including helping a manufacturer near you become one.

Next step

Tell us where you’re building.

A single home, a small development, or a project still on the back of an envelope — we’ll talk it through and connect you with the manufacturer closest to your site.

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