[Musical Intro] Hello and welcome. My name is J.T. Oram and you're listening to our Agricultural Food System 401 Capstone class' group project podcast. With me in our group, we're also students Marissa Brewer, Marina de la Cruz and Trinity Reeve. Our group has been working with Northwest Farm Credit Services to investigate plastic waste in the agriculture. More specifically, we are focusing on plastic mulches and have biodegradable plastic mulches or one alternative growers can use to cut down on a plastic waste. Today you'll hear interviews from a local grower as well as researchers from WSU Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center. First we'll hear from Dr. Lisa DeVetter and an assistant professor in Small Fruit Horticulture and her graduate student, Brenda Madrid. Both Lisa and Brenda have worked a lot with biodegradable plastic mulches and will help give us insight to where current research is at. This will be followed by our interview with Randy Oncoup, a retired raspberry grower in Skagit Valley who has worked closely with WSU's Extension Center in their trials and was a participant in the biodegradable mulch trial. Hi, Lisa and Brenda. Thanks so much for joining us today. Could you summarize your work with biodegradable mulches and any key points you found during your research? We're looking at application of biodegradable plastic mulches as well as other end-of-life pathways and small fruit production systems, so that's raspberry, strawberry, and then possibly, you know, blackberry and blueberry in the future. And so a lot of the testing is looking at how it's affecting field performance of the crop, so yield, weed suppression, crop quality, and then the next big question is how is that material performing in the soil once it's tilled into the soil? Is it really degrading? How can we characterize degradation, complete degradation? What's the fate and residence time? Because, you know, an extension, we want to ensure that what we're recommending to growers is a better alternative, and we have more, I don't see more confidence, but we're clear about what we know and what we don't know. And so that's, that's where I'll leave it and let Brenda elaborate. She had a really cool thesis project. Yeah, so from my thesis project, I looked at some major from the plastic video and their main objectives were to determine or evaluate if the application of different products would help influence greater deterioration of the most surface, and then degradation, and once it was tilled into the soil. From the study that we did, we determined that some of the products have the potential to influence deterioration, but only a select medium, so it wasn't consistent across. And none of the products were able to impact in soil degradation. We saw very minimal soil degradation, but compared to previous study, we did see a little bit more more surface area loss, so that let us know that the materials that we use may be more suitable for our area. And this has curated other questions moving forward, which can help us. We're thinking more so about looking into how if there are other products that could better influence deterioration and degradation, if maybe applying them before tillage could have an effect, and seeing if tout tillage impacts this, so if maybe we can get the particles of the video to be broke it down further into smaller pieces, if they'd be more susceptible to breakdown by microorganisms. And what about your your social finance project too? That was really amazing to me. Yeah, so my other project was typically in raspberry production systems. You do not utilize any sort of plastic launch covering, but we have noticed that some of the growers in our region have turned to adopting polyethylene much, which you may know is non-degradable. And if one of the growers did have experience in using the video, so Lisa and I had some interviews with the growers, we wanted to get information about their experiences and what their concerns, questions they had, things they were uncertain about. And we determined that in general most of the growers perceived the non-degradable P.E. launch to be a little bit less risky compared to the mediums. Mostly due because we still have questions about what happens after the mediums are told, how the impact of microplastics from the environment, soil, and we also determined that there are different types of what we call risk or considerations that growers thought think about before this study to do side-or-product. And a lot of this had to do with production questions, more fitting questions, and effect of the mulches on the plant itself in terms of root growth, past and pathogen, susceptibility, and I think it was irrigation for the recession. And so just to kind of summarize it, for me, programmatically, it's not just looking at crop response and soils, but also looking at the human dimension for outreach and understanding, along the maybe production supply and user chain, how growers and others are thinking about these materials. So we can better target our research as well as our outreach. During your research, did you look into the economic liability of using biodegradable mulches? We don't necessarily measure the economics, but we support economists that we collaborate with, and so what we've learned through our work as well as from other works with economists is biodegradable mulches are two to three times more expensive, but that's the initial cost. If you take into account all of the costs, you do end up being more economical with biodegradable mulches because you save on cost associated with removing mulch when we're swimming mulch systems here, as well as tillage in the mulch. If you're looking at like for raspberries, unmolched and mulched with plastics, whether it be biodegradable or polyethylene, we do get increased yield and productivity of the plants. So that was something also that was learned just about mulching effects in raspberry, the benefits too of using a biodegradable material still applies and that you are saving money on to physically remove and then dispose of that material. Have you done any research looking into reusing regular polyethylene mulch as a way to cut down on plastic waste? With regular polyethylene, my opinion is even if biodegradable, we have a lot of confidence on them, there's still going to be growers that are going to use polyethylene, so to me the more tools you can have for growers to improve sustainable outcomes on their farms with regards to plastic the better. So what we've been working on currently is there's a private company that looks at chemical recycling, so this is different than mechanical recycling, like when you take a plastic bottle and you recycle it, that's mechanical. Chemical would be breaking down the polymer, distilling it and taking those fractions and making other products, like more polyethylene or fuel, low-grade fossil fuels to high-grade propane just depends on the distillation process. So we're working with someone, I think there's the others called PDO and we're working with them to get some pilot data and we're working with them to submit a grant to beyond plastics for more work and then the federal grant that just got advanced for the next phase is also taking that in looking at biodegradals but also how can we improve mechanical recycling, how can we improve chemical or we call it also advanced recycling outcomes and then what about composites too? So taking mechanical or recycled plastic and making materials out of it like deck boards or roads and understanding you know, there's contamination in the material coming from a field like soil, how does that impact the various processes beyond like in the chemical mechanical and like composite avenues? What's like the usual feedback you get from growers when you talk about biodegradable mulches with them? I would say I hear from raspberry growers, most of them will say we're excited by this, the technology's not there yet but we encourage the work to still go on because hopefully it'll be there for us. Strawberry growers I think are similar, like in California the ones that we've worked with and it's always like sample size, it's a small pool but right now it's like okay I'm really interested let's scale up and more trials and see you know when we scale up what impacts are we having so they're being a little bit more aggressive with wanting to test it out. I don't know, Brenda how about you? I'd say at least with growers in our area which I've learned about there is definitely interest you know it really is a labor extensive process you use in an undi-vatable audience. It is expensive and there is this desire to be more environmentally friendly but traditionally most growers are slow to adopt new stuff so they they I think they'll wait back and wait and see if some more research and information is out there to really see how it's going to impact their soils over time and whether they're contributing to any further pollution but I do think they are excited and we always get a good turnaround of people when we have events about mediums. And next we have our interview with Randy Hunkett. Could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with the trials using biodegradable mulches with WSU? Oh sure. Well I've been involved in growing raspberries in the machine harvested industry which means the fruit ends up as processed frozen product. There's a really large group of growers right up here in what can county just before crossing into BC and that's where most of the acres have migrated to from further south. So I've been involved in the industry since the mid 80s. I've been a smaller scale comparatively farmer in my industry. I've I've have 60 acres that I've been farming and in in my world or industry any more that's quite small. So I have been involved in production agriculture. There's nothing niche about what I'm involved in but I've over the years became quite involved with the state raspberry commission and have sat on that commission multiple times and have kind of the research committee chair go to Guy and that's what I've worked with. The research partners in the northwest and that would be primarily Washington State University, some with Oregon State and some with our USDA ARS. So what kind of impacts did you see by using the biodegradable mulches as compared to not in terms of yield and amount of weeding they would do? Oh it was it was significant benefit. We could see that. I would say already within six weeks to two months. Of course weed management was a breeze with that. There was the occasional weed that would poke out around the plant which is pushed through the plastic but not many and I was very happy with that. So yeah weed control was great and the amount of growth and the plant during it for the establishment year was noticeably improved compared to the to the check plot and yeah I mean it was my two big concerns were weed control and moisture control and that's where I saw the plastic playing a huge role but the whole soil warming aspect that the black plastic also brought to the equation. I think provided potentially the biggest value really to utilizing a plastic no matter what kind of plastic in terms of number cane numbers or population after the first year we referred to as establishment year there's no no harvest because we use fluorocaine fruiting varieties in our system. So first year is all vegetative growth and then that overwinners comes reproductive way away we go but then the higher population of those of canes and the longer and bigger canes usually predict an increased yield and fruit the following year because there's just more framework to hang fruit on. So it was significant at that point we were only going by visual and along with numerical counts and a little bit of measuring but in terms of actual pounds of berries or fruit yield that that demonstrated a minimum usually of 20% yield increase for that first harvest year not the establishment year but for the first harvest year and it can be higher than that probably is between 20 and 40% yield increase. So do you use the biodegradable most just for the planning stock or are you re applying the mulches every year? In my mind I didn't see a real value or need for a plastic mulch long term it was just that establishment year that was the most critical time because that kind of sets the stage I mean we're planting for a 10 year crop or hopefully even more than that so we're counting on a really consistent healthy stand and it seems it just at least anecdotally when you have a really good establishment year that bodes very well for the life and the productivity of that planting but with this system then the question might be two from you folks would be what happens to that BDM or the biodegradable mulch that I laid down and that was a big question for me too what's this going to look like as we go through time and will this stuff just magically disappear? Well it doesn't just magically disappear in this system it's not it's just laying for the most part on the soil surface and it usually is fairly snug to the soil but over time there's biodegradation that is happening along with some phyto or photo I guess it would be photo degradation being out in the environment so by fall so we plant in stave may late may usually by September starting to see some significant tearing or fragmentation starting to happen with the plastic you know depending on the weather the wind or whatever rattling out around but it's starting to break down even though I would say I still have over 75% soil cover ground cover with plastic by the end of the growing season and by the time spring comes around when I'm really wanting to clean up the field and make it accessible with from machinery to manage my crop it's really quite fragmented and it's kind of blowing around a little bit most of it stays in the field one concern I have and it's on the negative side is some bits and pieces or fragments can potentially blow to the neighbors in a windstorm so you know those are some of the challenges and I think it comes down to figuring out how to manage that to minimize that and what I did after a few years of experiencing all these fragments on the soil surface which I still would cover them with dirt the following spring but if you can't get out there with a tractor and your disc or tiller to incorporate them into the soil you're kind of hooked and they're out there and you know there's billions of these things it appears you know floating around on the soil surface in the breeze and that that part's not ideal but once the plant I had the plants tied up it was no problem then I could go through with the tiller incorporate into the soil and I also used a light disc to throw a couple more inches of soil from my alleyway between the row up onto the row because there were still fragments there and bury it and actually get a lot more biological contact with with the plastic to complete the breakdown process so you know it's a matter of figuring out can you manage that or how you're going to manage it that's what I did so basically that was just after the first year of establishment even haven't tilled in by the next year and it wouldn't be a problem anymore yeah it was no longer seen in the field and I had no concerns at that point it had fragmented enough especially after I had buried it in the soil by then following growing season I did not have any concerns that that film the plastic film would be blocking any moisture or rains you know get down into the root system and also to be able to put on some fertilizer type products that would be able to get down to the roots so yeah that's the way it worked thank you for listening here's a closing statement we wanted to leave you from Randy it takes growers to step up and to partner with university and guide them and you know give that important feedback so that they really are can know that they're doing important and valuable work certainly everybody needs you know in the university world they need to be publishing things but most of our researchers really want their work to bring real value to the growers and that that then it behooves the industry and the individuals in those industries to step up and help that to happen it doesn't happen in a vacuum because you know you consider to research station and work in your lab and and think girl maybe this problem I could work on or that problem well you know it's a partnership you're really ought to be engaging with the people out there that have the struggles that understand what's going on and are willing to give you feedback and advice and formulating or crafting of a research project and then be willing I guess to offer some space on your farm to do some of the work if not all of the work. 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