How to deal with farmers’ love of plastic?

By Adelina Borta

For most of human history food security has been a pressing issue. Today, however, it has been all but solved. Thanks to many innovative farming solutions , we have been able to increase the nutritional satisfaction of much of the globe. Many of these solutions, however, such as polytunnels irrigation tubing and fertilisers, all require the use of plastic (Murray 2022). This is not widely known, yet is a crucial fact. Plastics play an important part in farming and have a huge positive impact by combating global food scarcity. Plastics can, therefore, benefit agriculture if used correctly. However, the dangers and damage associated with farming’s use of plastics must also be considered.

The prime use of plastic in agriculture is plastic-sheeted structures known as polytunnels, which create microclimates capable of withstanding harsh weather conditions, with the scope to help gardeners in peripheral regions of the world (Wilson 2017). Yields can be improved via using polytunnels because they keep the soil moist, preventing the growth of weeds and providing more nutrients to crops, therefore helping to produce more food. Consider the problems the UK might face without such innovations. Over recent decades, average UK crop yields have fluctuated from year to year, as a result of better or worse weather; yet now, thanks to these innovations that help create an improved agricultural production environment, the UK now produces 60% of its domestic food production, stabilising the production-tosupply ratio (FAO 2021).

However, whilst the upside of a technology like polytunnels is high, the focus of the debate is now how to stop polluting agricultural plastic from going to landfills, the volume of which entering them is growing rapidly. Just because agricultural plastic does not directly impact climate change, it can do harm when it enters the environment. There are huge trade-offs between the benefits of plastic in food production and their costs, when they are not properly recycled. Farmers and governments should focus on solutions, to make the most of plastic use in production, but minimise harm to the environment.

The use of plastic in agriculture divides opinions. The costs of plastics polluting the environment, if they are not collected properly, outweigh much of the benefits from farming. It is estimated that around 12.5 million tonnes of plastic are used in agriculture every year, with volumes growing rapidly. Problematically, only 30% of agricultural plastic used in the UK is recycled and the rest gets burned or goes to landfill (FAO 2021). The lack of a ‘circulatory’ system in agriculture cancels much of the benefits of using plastic, increasingly negative externalities. The lifetime costs of unrecycled plastic to society, the environment, and the economy in 2019 alone has been estimated at $3.7 trillion by the WWT (FAO 2021). Moreover, agricultural plastic pollution can create huge economic costs in the form of GDP reduction, due to the loss of hospitable land.

Despite the problems associated with plastics in farming, there exist solutions. The UK established the Green Tractor Scheme that aims to collect and process used farm plastic, while enabling farmers to have their packaging recycled, with the aim to be implemented before 2030. Although it sounds promising, it is very difficult and expensive to collect agri-plastics as it requires waste to be sorted, separated, as well as cleaned. Experts argue that most Agri-Plastics are 50% muck and water which means increased costs of recycling (Barylka 2019). Additionally, recycling Agri-plastics involves a collection and gate fee paid to the recycler, which makes the recycling process even more complex.

In order to deal with this gate fee, APE UK launched a voluntary pay scheme for manufacturers based on their new Agri-plastic product sales, in order to fund recycling charges Although this does not solve the entire problem, it does make recycling more promising for farmers (Barylka 2019)

Governments and farmers should now focus on minimising agricultural reliance on plastic. Whilst no one has yet come up with an alternative to agricultural plastic, a few companies from the UK and USA have begun buying plastic agro-wastes on a weight-basis, using farmers’ offloaded plastic to serve as raw materials for alternative uses, such as animal shelters Another organisation collects used drip irrigation tapes from farmers, recycles those into resins, and then sells them as raw materials to plastic packaging centres, thus reducing the environmental impact of wasted drip irrigation tapes (McLaughlin, Kinzelbach 2015). Modern farming practices have been instrumental in resolving food security; however, the problems associated with its misuse of plastic must also be considered (McLaughlin, Kinzelbach 2015).

References:

Murray, S. (2022) How to deal with farmers' love of plastic [online] ft.com. Available at https://www.ft.com/content/b98e547c-7a37-4fec-a448763a23417ca3

FAO (2021) Assessment of agricultural plastic and their sustainability [online] fao.org. Available at https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/CB7856EN/ Wilson, M. (2017) Superstrong polytunnels help Shetland move up the food chain [online] ft.com. Available at https://www.ft.com/content/c9ada714-9eb3-11e7-8b50-0b9f565a23e1 Barylka, Z. (2019) Grow more with less- Reducing plastic footprint in agriculture [online] netafim.com. Available at https://www.netafim.com/en/blog/grow-more-with-less---reducing-plastic-footprint-in-agriculture/ McLaughlin, D. Kinzelbach, W. (2015) Food security and sustainable resource management [online] Available at https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015WR01