Forever Plastics

Are you old enough to remember the anti-littering commercial showing an animal being slowly killed by strangulation from the plastic 6-pack beverage ring. How much more money would you spend to help protect the environment/ wildlife?

The hay baler packs loose grass and legume crops into tight bundles for feeding livestock. It was a boon for agriculture about 100 years ago. This machine saved an incredible amount of labor pitching loose hay; it also reduced the amount of space needed for storage. It was such a welcome invention, that even the Amish allow hay balers, if it is pulled by a team of horses.

Of course, to bind/tie your hay bales you must decide, much like the grocery not too long ago, paper or plastic. Well, there really isn’t paper twine, it is called sisal. But like paper, it is a natural fiber that will break down and rot if left in the elements. Plastic twine is just that, plastic, sometimes called nylon or poly.

On my farm we usually bale between 25,000 to 35,000 bales of hay per year. I have always used natural twine/sisal for all my hay. A bundle of 9,000 feet costs $60 and will make 500 bales. This comes out to about 12 cents per bale every time my knotter trips and ties a bale. That also means that anytime sisal twine is not collected and disposed of it will quickly return to nature through decay and not be a source of pollution.

I have always used nylon when baling straw. It is much stronger than sisal twine. It is also believed to do a better job of repelling mice that want to chew the strings. I also know that many straw bales are used outside. This means the twines on the straw bales will not break after being weathered. Nylon twine is cheaper than sisal, about half the price. That means most hay farmers usually use 100% nylon. If you do the math on 30,000 bales for my farm, using all nylon instead of sisal would save me $1,800.00. That is some serious money.

This year I found myself with an abundance of nylon. In the interest of saving some money in the middle of summer I started using the blue nylon twine. This eventually agitated my conscious, let me explain. Every time a knotter on a hay baler ties the knot for the bale, a twine knife cuts the two strings in the knot. A twine disc holds about 2” of twine from the cut of the previous bale until the other end of the twine joins it to complete the full loop around the bale and a completes another knot. This 2” of twine is called the tail and is produced on every bale. This means wherever we baled this summer we were constantly dropping plastic tails on the ground. They won’t decay for a long time, if they ever do.

About 3 weeks ago, I pleased my conscious by switching back to sisal twine. The twine is dyed green and blends in with nature while it rots. I could no longer stand my own hypocrisy for $1800 per year. Nylon twine tails are not the only issue.

I remember reading an article long ago about how important it was for livestock farmers to always gather all the nylon twine when feeding hay. The osprey, a raptor very common out west in cattle country would frequently seek out strands of nylon twine as nesting material. Sometimes the birds became tangled in the twine and suffered death. Farmers have been warned for decades about the importance of quickly disposing nylon twines.

We may no longer have 6-pack rings, but plasticosis (disease of digestive tract from ingesting plastic) is rapidly rising. I will now spend the extra money and not be a contributor to that. If only we could find a solution to the plastic water bottles I find in my fields.