For a new plastics economy in agriculture: Policy reflections on the EU strategy from a local perspective

Abstract

Plastic production and consumption around the world have seen a rapid increase since the end of World War II, with an expected peak in the next 20 years. Agriculture is among the causes of this due to its intensive farming practices and the use of various plastic materials. This produces both advantages (e.g. yield increase, early harvest, reduced use of chemicals) and disadvantages. The disadvantages are particularly related to a plastic waste management problem, from which the contamination of terrestrial, marine and air environments with severe consequences on food security and human health also derive. With the 2018 European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, the European Commission (EC) identifies a set of actions to reduce plastic pollution in the decades ahead. For the actual implementation of this strategic vision, however, innovative investment and appropriate policy tools need to be identified. This paper attempts to understand the acceptability of some ad-hoc policy tools among farmers by investigating their attitudes towards the application of subsidies, tax-credits and pay-back (this latter under an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme) to abate agricultural plastic pollution with the aim of making this sector cleaner and more oriented to the implementation of the sustainability principles. While referring to the territory of the province of Foggia in southern Italy as a case study, we analyse the preferences expressed by 1,783 farmers by using a multinomial logistic regression. Key results suggest that large agricultural farms would favour the adoption of tax-credits. In contrast, small farms would consider more favourable the introduction of a pay-back tool to incentivize their contribution to plastic pollution abatement. The significance of the obtained results is twofold. First, farm size is a key element towards a differentiation of policy tools to adopt for plastic waste management in agriculture. Second, the differentiation of the above policy tools according to the farm dimension would lead to a cost-effectiveness management of agricultural plastic waste.