Oh, Strawberries!

I love strawberries, but I’m not much of a gardener. This means that most of my strawberries come from industrial-level agriculture via my local grocery store. I do try to only buy them in season, but some new research indicates potentially negative impacts on the local ecosystem.

Tiwari presented their research at a recent conference in geochemistry. The work still needs to be published and go through peer review but the results are worth paying attention to already. Many strawberry fields are supported through the use of polytunnels. These plastic tunnels, almost like mini-greenhouses, are intended to warm the plants, reduce evaporation, and reduce weed growth. At the end of the season, the plastic is removed. But it can be hard to get it all.

Pieces of plastic get left behind every season due to fragments breaking off and sticking to the soil. This is just focused on bigger macroplastics which are at least 5 mm across. The researchers are still analyzing their samples for microplastics. Season after season, this plastic is building up; the researchers found more than 200,000 pieces per hectare.

Unfortunately, this plastic build-up appears to be contributing to the overall decline of soil health. Moisture content, microbial respiration, and nitrogen that plants can use all declined as the levels of macroplastic pollution increased.

While there are alternatives, the plastic versions tend to be the cheapest, through purchase cost and/or maintenance. However, I’m curious if that will change if we start including the long-term costs of soil degradation.