The term plasticulture refers to the practice of using plastic materials in agricultural applications.
The plastic materials themselves are often and broadly referred to as "ag plastics." Plasticulture ag plastics include soil fumigation film, irrigation drip tape/tubing, nursery pots and silage bags, but the term is most often used to describe all kinds of plastic plant/soil coverings. Such coverings range from plastic mulch film, row coverings, high and low tunnels (polytunnels), to plastic greenhouses.
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The use of plasticulture in agriculture is growing rapidly, perhaps nowhere more visibly than around Almería in southern Spain. The eastern approaches to Almería, north of the airport, are densely covered, as is a large area further north-east, surrounding the towns of Campohermoso, Los Pipaces and Los Grillos (close to Níjar).
The densest concentration lies about 20 km south-west of Almería, where almost the entire Campo de Dalías, a low-lying cape, is now under plastic (an estimated area of 20,000 hectares). Further west, a similar, but smaller, coastal plain around Carchuna, southeast of Motril, is similarly enveloped. The technique is not restricted to the plains; it is also applied to wide terraces on the sides of shallow valleys, as the valley north of Castell de Ferro shows.
Elsewhere along the Costa Tropical and the Costa del Sol, particularly between Almería and Málaga, fruit trees growing on terraces in steeper valleys may be covered with vast tents of plastic netting.
One significant component of plasticulture is the disposal of used ag plastics. Technologies exist which allow for many ag plastics to be recycled into viable plastic resins for reuse in the plastics manufacturing industry.[1]