Breaking the plastic cycle in agriculture
Sustainable solutions and alternatives to halt the proliferation of plastic
05/06/2023
Agricultural value chains used 12.5 million tonnes of plastic products in plant and animal production and 37.3 million tonnes in food packaging in 2019. We need new solutions that provide many of plastic’s benefits in a more sustainable way.
©FAO/Giuseppe Bizzarri
We need to talk about plastics. Plastic products have become a convenient tool in many areas of life, and agriculture is no different. Plastics are used for everything from seedling trays and irrigation tubing to pesticide containers and livestock feed bags. However, their proliferation has led to mounting environmental problems that threaten soil health, water quality and human well-being.
In late 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released a landmark report assessing the use of plastics in agriculture. The report calculated that, in 2019, agricultural value chains used 12.5 million tonnes of plastic products in plant and animal production and 37.3 million tonnes in food packaging.
“We estimated that crop production and livestock sectors together contributed 10 million tonnes, followed by fisheries and aquaculture with 2.1 million tonnes and forestry with 0.2 million tonnes,” said Richard Thompson, FAO Agricultural Plastics and Sustainability Specialist and one of the authors of the report.
“The global demand for greenhouse, mulching and silage films is also projected to increase by about 50 percent by 2030,” he added.
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