Plastic mulch has indeed certain advantages:

- cheap and effective, very easy suppression of weeds for high-value vegetables
- quickly installed on large surfaces
- saves irrigation water
- avoids erosion
- combines well with a mechanized horticultural system (fertilization, irrigation...)

Globalization and industrialization of agriculture increased economic pressure for farmers so much that many felt the need to industrialize their cropping systems.

The weird thing is that even in organic vegetable production, there is a lot of plastic mulch used (because they don't use the potent synthetic herbicides their conventional neighbors have). Without herbicides, weeding is a lot of work.
And with increasing costs of manual labor, and with many parts of the population not willing anymore to do the physically challenging work on the field, cost cutting became very important.

Nevertheless:
Plastic mulch sucks totally. Main thing are the microplastics, which is a *huge* issue, although they come also through many other pathways into our soils and then into the vegetables. There's a lot of plastic bags and shit in the organic waste fraction, not to mention sewage sludge, which is probably one of the most effective ways to distribute the microplastics of the washing clothes (washing machines are essentially microplastic-producing devices), cosmetics (yes, industry still adds microplastics in many products) and all the tyre dust from the roads that end up in the sewage.

But anyway, organic mulch (grass clippings, legume-cereal mixtures, wood chips...) has many benefits over plastic mulch:
- can be produced on-site (as cover crops, or using byproducts from agriculture or forestry). This is an important aspect for #Agroecology: make Peasants independent of BigAg.
- surface application of organic material adds nutrients and carbon to the soil
- providing a nutritious cover for soil organisms (think about that in nature, soil is almost never bare. Usually, or there's grass, or leaves. It's us humans who seem to love bare soil)
- properties (cover vs decomposition) can be adapted to the specific needs of the crop, the soil and the system (caveat: you have to know what you do)
- organic mulch does not leave microplastic shit in your soil. But creates the perfect environment for your soil organisms to thrive.

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And, before somebody comes with "biodegradable" plastics. They are utter greenwashing nonsense.
Many of the biodegradable plastics just degrade quicker into ... microplastics (and since you can't see them anymore, it is considered "degraded"). The whole bioplastics thing is something for another rant, another day.

@justafrog @dandylover1 @globalplantGPC

#Mulching #PlasticMulching #Permaculture #Agriculture #Horticulture #Vegetables #Garden #Microplastics #PlasticPollution #PlanetaryBoundaries #Agroecology