What a complicated set of choices a farmer has to navigate his or her way through!
This week, Alex and Jen put down biodegradable plastic mulch on 10 or 15 beds, which would become the home of tomato, courgette, squash and watermelon plants outside.
Alex says that mulched plants will produce between two and four times as much as non-mulched plants. But he also mentioned that how much the plastic truly degrades is questionable, and then there is the energy cost in making the mulch - "best" would be no plastic whatsoever, but for a farmer who needs to make a living from the produce they sell (as opposed to through eco-tourism, running courses, or whatever) it's an easy decision. For $120 you can buy normal plastic, $460 biodegradable, plus the investment of an implement to place the plastic (basically a roller with earth clearers, the spool of plastic, then earth replacers - so the plastic goes down and then gets held down with earth), and then just two people for half a day you have rows and rows of mulched beds.
How much energy is used? How harmful to the environment? What if it was 50% better than the non-degradable plastic, would that be ok? 30% better? 80%?
It's really hard to gauge these things, I feel. I'd love to be a zero fossil fuel farmer, to be "purist" but it's just not "practical" because of the world we live in etc etc.
But it's all choices. It should be empowering, but I find the fact that real world stuff means we aren't able to make the best choices without impoverishing ourselves (this is entirely subjective of course! Is not having a car, or a TV, impoverishing? Or is it just not having the money to be able to make the choice not to buy a car or TV that is the problem?).
"I would be a fool to accept a yield of half for my courgettes, squash, and watermelons just because I don't want to buy one roll of biodegradable plastic" - discuss!
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