Agronomic benefits and reduced environmental impact the specific role of agricultural plastics

Picture

AUTHOR : Gilles DENNLER, Director of Research,Centre Technique Industriel de la Plasturgie et des Composites français¹ (IPC)

Over the last few decades, the use of plastics in agriculture (excluding packaging) has grown remarkably around the world. The many advantages of these materials, diverse in nature and varied in properties, have made them essential in all modern agricultural activities. Gilles DENNLER, Director of Research at the IPC, explains why these plastics cannot be considered as packaging.

The usefulness of plastics for plant production

In horticulture, the largest quantities of plastic are used for crop protection. In the form of greenhouses or low tunnels, polymeric films are laid over plants to create a microclimate more favourable to their growth and to protect them from various nuisances. Plastic films are also widely used for mulching. In this case, they are laid directly on the ground, underneath the plants, increasing the soil temperature by several degrees to a depth of 10 cm and thus encouraging faster crop development. Mulch film also offers significant protection against weeds and pests, rainwater leaching and evaporation of water from the soil. Finally, in the form of netting or non-woven cloth, plastics protect fruit and vegetable crops from weather (hail, wind, cold) and animal (insects, birds and other pests) damage.

The usefulness of plastics in animal production

Plastics are also widely used in livestock farming, where they play a crucial role in preserving fodder between harvest and consumption by livestock. Offering an effective barrier against oxygen, plastic silage films help achieve the anaerobic conditions needed to ferment the sugars present in the plants and produce the acids that guarantee preservation. They can be found in the form of bunker silos, or wrapping film around bales of fodder. But plastics are also used for dry fodder, in the form of twine and netting. Finally, let’s not forget irrigation and drainage pipes and fittings, both flexible and rigid, which are essential for managing all the liquids present on farms.

The agronomic functions of agricultural plastics

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

Want to read more?
Full articles starting at €7.80/month or buy juste one article at 1€

Pay 1€ to read

Get full access to all articles

From €7.80/monthly

 

Our readers also read

  • Home
  • Plastimedia
  • Agronomic benefits and reduced environmental impact the specific role of agricultural plastics