Plastic free farming - somebody needs to do something.

[newholland]

Just had a very interesting Christmas reading about the Junk raft and Roz Savage.

Is anybody on TFF trying to halt commercial farming's hunger for plastic usage?

Is anybody attempting to change the agricultural communities general lazy desire to proudly burn, bury or conveniently ignore its waste whilst openly taking pride in allowing it to become somebody else's problem?.

The farm plastic recycling companies are getting fewer year on year. Red tractor waste policing is pathetic and easily side stepped.

We need to get a forward thinking grip on the situation.

Stopping using plastic in the first place is the answer.

Does anybody have any contacts with regard to companies or farmers who have successfully found ways to stop single use plastic in farming and / or dairy farming in particular?. Mashed potatoes on the silage clamp instead of plastic etc?.

There is no such word as "can't".

Positive replies only please.

PS - agricultural plastic consumption seems to be 15% of the total world plastic usage, so yes, we can make a big difference.

PPS - the plastic used to wrap bales each year would wrap the whole world 20 times over. Year on year.

 

[Sharpy]

Solway was doing a good job on the wrap recycling front, think that they are now having to charge, silage in any form is the difficult one, a return to the silage towers perhaps?

 

[Poorbuthappy]

The very least we can do is make sure it's recycled. Annoys me when people tell me theirs just goes to landfill. Or worse still, as you say, burnt.
It's got seemingly impossible to recycle net wrap, though it's a less significant amount than silage wrap. Anyone recycling it these days?

I try to make as much hay as possible to reduce cost and plastic.

There was talk a few years ago of a couple lads trying to develop a biodegradable wrap - anyone still working on that? Or edible wrap was another idea muted.

 

[Clive]

Just had a very interesting Christmas reading about the Junk raft and Roz Savage.

Is anybody on TFF trying halt commercial farming's hunger for plastic usage?

Is anybody attempting to change the agricultural communities general lazy desire to proudly burn, bury or conveniently ignore its waste whilst openly taking pride in allowing it to become somebody else's problem?.

The farm plastic recycling companies are getting fewer year on year. Red tractor waste policing is a joke.

We need to get a forward thinking grip on the situation.

Stopping using plastic in the first place is the answer.

Does anybody have any contacts with regard to companies or farmers who have successfully found ways to stop single use plastic in farming and / or dairy farming in particular?. Mashed potatoes on the silage clamp instead of plastic etc?.

There is no such word as "can't".

Positive replies only please.

from our own arable farm point of view moving to liquid fert and farm saving seed has massively removed plastic waste

crop protection products packaging is the only real significant source left here now but i’m not aware of any alternatives or efforts to reduce that by the ag chem industry?

it always strikes me the reliance on plastic that livestock farms have, anytime i ever visit a farm with livestock there seems to be plastic everywhere ! i’m not sure what can be done but you are right that something needs to be


as usual it’s down to money and leadership though to make change which is mostly lacking in uk ag

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Quite a few west of here are using lime as "silage sheet" with good results, downside of course is that it's bulky and mined. Upside is that you simply chomp through it and is non-toxic to cattle and feeder wagons.

I HATE plastics, especially single-use plastics, so we're looking to shift away from ensiled feed as much as possible and look to what we can do without it as a staple part of wintering - storing more feed on the landscape, rather than raping it at both ends, the benefits being happier soil biology and a soil that better copes with treading in the wet season

 

[newholland]

Biodegradable sheets or wrap wold be a great help. Commercial companies really need a kick up the backside.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

The very least we can do is make sure it's recycled. Annoys me when people tell me theirs just goes to landfill. Or worse still, as you say, burnt.
It's got seemingly impossible to recycle net wrap, though it's a less significant amount than silage wrap. Anyone recycling it these days?

I try to make as much hay as possible to reduce cost and plastic.

There was talk a few years ago of a couple lads trying to develop a biodegradable wrap - anyone still working on that? Or edible wrap was another idea muted.

Biodegradable wrap was on my FB feed a while back, I'll keep an eye out for it when it returns.

I still don't see why hemp sheets can't be developed, all it takes is someone to take the ball and run with it, under the radar of the oil companies of course

 

[Sharpy]

The very least we can do is make sure it's recycled. Annoys me when people tell me theirs just goes to landfill. Or worse still, as you say, burnt.
It's got seemingly impossible to recycle net wrap, though it's a less significant amount than silage wrap. Anyone recycling it these days?

I try to make as much hay as possible to reduce cost and plastic.

There was talk a few years ago of a couple lads trying to develop a biodegradable wrap - anyone still working on that? Or edible wrap was another idea muted.

Local farmers son has a skip business, when plastic had a value he took artic loads down to Solway, it at least paid the fuel and some wages. Now with the oversupply of waste plastic he might get a free tip at best, so the plastic goes to landfill. Its nuts, but shows the need to make it financially viable to recycle.

 

[newholland]

@Clive please approach somebody like kelvin cave or biotal and tell them you have the leverage of 41,000 members of TFF who are going to chase them around their office water coolers until they provide biodegradable /edible silage wrap / sheet / string

 

[Sharpy]

@Clive please approach somebody like kelvin cave or biotal and tell them you have the leverage of 41,000 members of TFF who are going to chase them around their office water coolers until they provide biodegradable /edible silage wrap / sheet / string

The biodegradable string is sisal.

 

[Clive]

@Clive please approach somebody like kelvin cave or biotal and tell them you have the leverage of 41,000 members of TFF who are going to chase them around their office water coolers until they provide biodegradable /edible silage wrap / sheet / string

TFF is not the NFU - we don’t have time, staff resources or money to do much more than just keep this website alive and kicking i’m afraid

 

[newholland]

@Kiwi Pete please may you expand on how lime works? ….. is this just normal white powder lime layered over the silage clamp? how thick? …. can dairy cows eat mouthfuls of lime happily?

 

[Scribus]

Two things -

1. Plastic is easily recycled into diesel substitute but that of course goes against the great commercial push for disposable cars, or electric vehicles as we are supposed to call them.

2. We need an idea that bridges the silage clamp and bale divide, something that offers the flexibility of bales without the use of shrink wrap while still keeping the grass in a way that it may be easily used and handled on the farm. Sealed barns filled with an inert gas would be far too expensive and problematical so perhaps we should be seeking other ways of preserving forage altogether, or maybe it's time to think of vertical silos again.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

@Kiwi Pete please may you expand on how lime works? ….. is this just normal white powder lime layered over the silage clamp? how thick? …. can dairy cows eat mouthfuls of lime happily?

Yep, just "normal" (for us, Ca lime is normal lime) spread on the stack and rolled down, as water is applied to help make it gel.
A few inches is generally pretty adequate, as long as the stack is well enough compacted, I think a tracked exacvator is probably the best for compacting the lime down
It dries like a pie crust, a big ranch in Southland has stored silage underground for well over a decade using a lime cap over the top

Probably the main caveats would be it'd be less suitable for feeding on concrete (they'd select it out and add to waste) and to pregnant stock (stops them mobilising their own Ca reserve)
And, it isn't exactly a renewable resource

 

[Scribus]

@Clive please approach somebody like kelvin cave or biotal and tell them you have the leverage of 41,000 members of TFF who are going to chase them around their office water coolers until they provide biodegradable /edible silage wrap / sheet / string

But TFF doesn't have the leverage of 41,000 members. All it has is a long list of people who have at some point registered with the site.

 

[Sharpy]

Yep, just "normal" (for us, Ca lime is normal lime) spread on the stack and rolled down, as water is applied to help make it gel.
A few inches is generally pretty adequate, as long as the stack is well enough compacted, I think a tracked exacvator is probably the best for compacting the lime down
It dries like a pie crust, a big ranch in Southland has stored silage underground for well over a decade using a lime cap over the top

Probably the main caveats would be it'd be less suitable for feeding on concrete (they'd select it out and add to waste) and to pregnant stock (stops them mobilising their own Ca reserve)
And, it isn't exactly a renewable resource

Upside would be the buffering of acid silages and reject stuff would be spread to land as a liming material.

 

[Treemover]

I see a huge amount of inputs coming in plastic now; whereas years ago it was packaged differently.

I hate wrap silage and round bale netting. Am i right in saying that netting and twine is not recyclable?

It would be nice if we could utilise plastic on farm ie make things . Stockboard is a great product. I often wondered if we could make plastic beams and sheets to make sheds? Uv might be the enemy?

 

[Clive]

But TFF doesn't have the leverage of 41,000 members. All it has is a long list of people who have at some point registered with the site.

it doesn’t matter if it does or doesn’t - TFF is not a lobbying organisation, we are not paid to change UK ag and have no agenda to do so. The NFU seemingly fail despite having 30 something million a year to spend so what chance do you think we have with the bit of loose change that comes through our door ! ?

i’ve lost count of the number of posts over the years saying TFF should organise / change / lobby / protest/ boycott etc but members need to get their heads around the idea that this is JUST a knowledge transfer website, run by a handful of people who love the industry with very small amounts of cash, time and other resources

if you want people to represent you then let the NFU know it........

 

[Scribus]

it doesn’t matter if it does or doesn’t - TFF is not a lobbying organisation, we are not paid to change UK ag and have no agenda to do so. the NFU fail despite have ing 30 something v million a year to spend so what chance do you think we have with the bit of loose change that comes through our door !

i’ve lost count of the number of posts over the years saying TFF should organise / change / lobby / protest/ boycott etc but members need to get their heads around the idea that this is JUST a website, run by a handful of people who love the industry with very small amounts of cash, tine and other resources

if you want people to represent you then let the NFU know it

Calm down now Clive, I was, in a rather oblique way, highlighting just one aspect of what you are saying.

 

[Clive]

Calm down now Clive, I was, in a rather oblique way, highlighting just one aspect of what you are saying.

i’m calm thanks

just think people need to stop hoping that some sort of hero will come along and fix their world for them ......

if people want change THEY have to make it happen