Environmental impacts of agricultural plastic film mulch: Fate, consequences, and solutions

Plastic mulch films were first trialed at agricultural research stations in the late 1950s and subsequently adopted commercially for vegetable production in the early 1960s (Kasirajan and Ngouajio, 2012). They are now used extensively within a range of arable and horticultural cropping settings throughout the world. Plastic film mulching (PFM) was originally designed for soil water conservation and raising soil temperatures and has proved indispensable for maintaining agricultural production in many water-deficient or cold regions. For example, in the Loess Plateau of China (Fig. 1), where the climate is cool and semi-arid and the soil is loose and erosive, PFM is the basis for the sustainable development of the dryland farming system (Li et al., 2020a). PFM also offers additional benefits, including reduced weed and pest pressure, enhanced fertilizer use efficiency, shortened ripening times, and improved crop and vegetable quantity and quality.