In the dry farming areas of northern China, agricultural film covering cultivation has significant effects of increasing temperature and moisture, resisting drought, saving water, and increasing production and income, so it is widely used. However, the used agricultural film can easily bring potential threats to agricultural production. The winter leisure season is the time for concentrated recycling of agricultural waste. Can these wastes be recycled and how much can be recycled? What bottlenecks still exist that need to be overcome?

In the past few days, in the high-standard farmland in Wuwei, Jiuquan, Zhangye and other places in the Hexi Corridor area of Gansu Province, residual film picking and recycling machines are working in the fields, and villagers nearby collect the waste mulch films picked up by the machine. , and send them to the recycling point in town to exchange the old ones for new ones.

Niu Taihui, deputy mayor of Xiehe Town, Liangzhou District, Wuwei City: On the one hand, it effectively reduces the residue of mulch films in the fields and reduces farmland pollution. On the other hand, it replaces waste films with new ones. The film method has enhanced the public's environmental awareness and also effectively reduced farmers' planting costs.

In various towns in Liangzhou District, Wuwei City, each town has set up recycling points to carry out "old-for-new" mulch film activities to ensure that the new film is exchanged in place and the old film is recycled in place. Every cubic meter of old film collected by farmers can be exchanged for 10 kilograms of new film increased everyone¡¯s enthusiasm for picking up used mulch films. In 2023, Liangzhou District has exchanged 74.2 tons of new film and recycled 7,420 cubic meters of old film through "trade-in". In a recycling company, these waste agricultural films and drip irrigation tapes are cut, broken, and cleaned before entering the granulator, where they are processed into cylindrical black plastic particles, and finally made into plastic products according to demand. As of the end of 2022, Gansu Province has 132 agricultural film recycling companies in normal operation and 1,827 recycling outlets. It has basically formed a recycling system of "counties have processing companies, townships have recycling sites, and villages have stacking sites." The agricultural film recycling rate It has been stable above 80% for 6 consecutive years.

The recycling and ecological accounts behind 0.005 mm

Among agricultural wastes, mulch films are difficult to recycle because they are thin and fragile. In order to improve the recycling rate of mulch films, relevant departments have promoted the use of 0.015 mm thickened mulch films to replace the original 0.01 mm ordinary mulch films through price subsidies. Behind 0.005 mm, there are recycling accounts and ecological accounts.

According to China¡¯s mulch film production standards issued and implemented in 2018, the thickness of agricultural mulch films shall not be less than 0.01 mm. The thinner the mulch film, the easier it is to break, the more difficult it is to manually pick up and clean or mechanically recycle, and the lower the recycling rate. In order to improve the recycling rate, starting from 2022, China will begin to promote the use of high-strength thickened mulch films in Gansu, Xinjiang and other places. Taking Li Shuangxue, a major grower in Liangzhou District, Wuwei City, as an example, all 1,700 acres of fields that need to be mulched have been covered with thickened mulch this year.

Li Shuangxue, Chairman of the Shuangxue Agricultural Machinery Farmers Professional Cooperative in Liangzhou District, Wuwei City: Thickened mulch film has many advantages for our farmers, such as high mechanized recovery rate, moisture conservation, and As much as we lay in the spring, we can recycle in the fall.

The reporter learned that the thickness of thickened mulch films currently on the market is mainly 0.015 mm, which is 0.005 mm thicker than ordinary mulch films. However, mulch films are sold by weight. For the same coverage area, the thinner the mulch film, the lower the cost of use. If thickened mulch is promoted, farmers' costs will inevitably increase.

Liu Hong, director of the Agricultural Supervision Station in Liangzhou District, Wuwei City: If there were no subsidies, people would still consider the price factor and would choose 0.01 mm mulch film, mainly 0.01 mm now. The mulch is easy to spread on the ground. The reason why it is easy to spread out is that it has better ductility. If it is 1 meter, you can pull it out again, and it may be able to spread out to 1.1 meters, and then you can spread out a little more ground.

Li Shuangxue calculated an account for the reporter. One acre of corn requires 5 kilograms of ordinary mulch film. If thickened high-strength mulch film is used, 7 kilograms are needed. At the market price of 10 yuan per kilogram of mulch film, The cost of using thickened mulch increases by 20 yuan per mu. However, in Liangzhou District, there is a price subsidy of 30 yuan per mu for using thickened mulch film. After financial subsidies, the actual cost of using thickened high-strength mulch film is almost the same as that of ordinary mulch film. Under price subsidies, thickened and high-strength mulch films are gradually accepted by growers. At a mulch film production company in Minqin County, Wuwei, 90% of its production capacity is currently used to produce thickened mulch films.

Wang Luhe, Office Director of Gansu Bond Industrial Co., Ltd.: The 0.015 mm mulch film can be removed in one strip. Like the original 0.01mm mulch, after a year of weathering, it is difficult to recycle it in autumn. Some time ago, we went there for a return visit, and a common man in Shuangsheng Town said that the 0.01 mm mulch film they used before cost 1.5 workers per acre of land per day, and the thickened and high-strength mulch film could be recycled in one morning.

Chen Binde, Director of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau of Liangzhou District, Wuwei City: Our high-standard farmland in 2024 will all implement thickened mulch films. A subsidy of 30 yuan is provided for one acre of land, which makes up for the price difference between thickened mulch film and thin (mulch) mulch film. Then the mulch film is thickened, the recycling rate is relatively high, and the growers can get part of the income. Such policy subsidies, coupled with part of the income gained from recycling, play a very good role in protecting farmland and ecological protection.

Reducing costs and increasing value are forcing the development of specialized agricultural tools

The biggest bottleneck in the recycling process of mulch film is the difficulty of collection. In order to effectively reduce recycling costs and improve reuse In order to increase the added value, local agricultural machinery companies are also accelerating the research and development of professional mulch film recycling agricultural tools.

Li Shuangxue, a large grower in Liangzhou District, Wuwei City, is using machinery and manual methods to recycle agricultural film. This method of gathering agricultural film and straw together with agricultural tools will cause the agricultural film to be mixed with debris. Together, this is not only the biggest headache for Li Shuangxue, but also the bottleneck to improve the recycling rate of mulch film.

Li Shuangxue, Chairman of the Shuangxue Agricultural Machinery Farmers Professional Cooperative in Liangzhou District, Wuwei City, Gansu Province: (Recycling manufacturer) Just don¡¯t want it, you have to pick them up one by one manually. People only want it after it has been cleaned, but the cost of the work we do is quite high, nearly 40 yuan per acre.

The reporter learned from the visit that for recycling companies, the added value of recycling such mulch films with large slag content will be much lower.

Wang Luhe, Office Director of Gansu Bond Industrial Co., Ltd.: The broken ones with large slag content will be crushed and pressed into well covers. For example, plastic granules produced after washing and granulation should cost about five to six thousand yuan per ton. If they are directly crushed and processed into mulch powder, the price will be about one thousand yuan per ton.

Gansu Province has more than 52 million acres of cultivated land, and the annual mulched area is about 28 million acres. The huge market demand and the actual bottleneck of mulch film recycling have also forced local agricultural machinery companies to carry out professional agricultural tools for mulch film recycling. research and development. In the past month, Yang Chengda, the person in charge of an agricultural machinery factory, has been running back and forth between the factory and the experimental field, constantly testing and improving the new generation of mulch film recycling machines. Compared with the "simple and crude" method of gathering waste mulch film and crop straw together, the machine he developed can effectively separate the waste residue through shaking and winding of the sieve bed.

According to reports, if the impurities in the mulch film are manually separated, one person can only work 5 acres a day. If a machine is used, the workload can reach 70 acres a day, which greatly reduces costs and improves efficiency. At present, Gansu Province has organized a number of on-site meetings for mechanized recycling of farmland film residues. Some outstanding agricultural machinery will be registered for patents, declared for acceptance, and mass-produced as soon as possible.

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