Plastics are seeping into farm fields, food and eventually human bodies. Can they be stopped?

Around the world, plastics are finding their way into farm fields—coated over the ground in fertilizer, wrapped around seeds, stretched as tarps to lock in moisture and as plastic waste from other industries. It's a problem that has long littered the landscape in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where a plague of plastic bags, locally known as buveera, is woven into the fabric of daily life. They show up in layers of excavated dirt roads and clog waterways. But now, they can be found in remote areas of farmland, too. Some of the debris includes the thick plastic bags used for planting coffee seeds in nurseries. Climate change makes agricultural plastic, already a necessity for many crops, even more unavoidable for some farmers. Meanwhile, research continues to show that itty-bitty microplastics alter ecosystems and end up in human bodies. Scientists, farmers and consumers all worry about how that's affecting human health, and many seek solutions. But industry experts say it’s difficult to know where plastic ends up or get rid of it completely, even with the best intentions of reuse and recycling programs. According to a 2021 report on plastics in agriculture by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, soil is one of the main receptors of agricultural plastics. Some studies have estimated that soils are more polluted by microplastics than the oceans. “Microplastic is a very big challenge. We experience so many plastics and that is brought up by the reason of having so many plastic factories or industries of bottling companies for water, for juice, and then for energy drinks, so they process so many plastics,” said Nicholas Kayondo, who is a crop scientist and a farmer in the outskirts of the Ugandan Capital Kampala. Some farmers say agricultural plastic, already a necessity for many crops, is becoming even more necessary as climate change fuels extreme weather. But for those tending the fields that microplastics end up in, there's a growing sense of frustration. This article was provided by The Associated Press.