Mulch Film Contaminates Farmland as Competent Authorities Engage in an Absurd “Duel” | Republished: What Happened Next
Foodthink Speaks
The original article was deleted by WeChat two days after publication on the grounds of “receiving a complaint and violating the Provisions on the Administration of Internet User Public Account Information Services”, and articles published by Foodthink on other platforms were also taken down one after another. Given the public attention the article attracted, and in order to preserve the basis for public discussion, we have removed specific place names and republished the article with information preserved to the greatest extent.
Although the article drew attention from relevant authorities after publication, there has been no substantive progress on remediating the contamination or pursuing accountability. At the request of the local sub-district office, the processing enterprise nearest to the affected farmer has removed the processing equipment and raw materials from the farmland in question, after which the land at the temporary processing site and stockpile site was ploughed, burying the mulch film fragments in the soil. However, two groundnut haulm processing enterprises in the same village are still carrying out processing. As of today, the local ecological environment and agriculture and rural affairs departments have still taken no action against the enterprise concerned, citing unclear jurisdiction. The affected farmer fears that as the traces of processing and evidence of soil contamination disappear, subsequent accountability will become increasingly difficult. At present, only the soil on the land contracted by the affected farmer, Old Li, has been sampled and sent for testing; soil remediation has not yet commenced.
I. A Mulch-Film Calamity from Nowhere
Old Li had no choice but to gather the mulch film fragments in the cattle shed with a handful of workers. “This film is so light and so fragile—it looks like substandard ultra-thin mulch film.”
If left untreated, the mulch film would become mixed into the soil during ploughing, affecting the growth of this season’s crop; once buried, it could never be recovered and would not easily decompose, breaking down only very slowly in the soil into plastic fragments, or even being absorbed by crops in the form of microplastics.
How could Old Li, who did not use mulch film himself, have become a victim of mulch film pollution? It turned out that from 25 December the previous year, a temporary processing plant had been erected just 100 metres from his field. This small factory, occupying barely a few dozen square metres, purchased large quantities of groundnut haulms from surrounding farmers, then shredded and processed them into roughage for feeding livestock. Because the mulch film was not removed when the groundnut haulms were purchased, the film was entangled with the haulms and fed into the machine together with them. The shredded mulch film was carried by the wind onto neighbouring farmland, including Old Li’s.
This processing plant had been set up temporarily after the groundnut harvest, and the land on which it stood had originally been the village’s permanent basic farmland. As the setup was makeshift, there were no additional protective measures at the processing site, causing mulch film to scatter in all directions.
On 1 January 2025, Old Li called the 12345 Mayor’s Hotline to report the pollution. He subsequently submitted written statements to the local sub-district office, the Bureau of Ecology and Environment, the Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and other departments, setting out his situation.
More than two months had passed since the incident. The season for sowing spring wheat was upon them, and Old Li also intended to plant peas, garlic, oilseed rape, pak choi and other vegetables, which once mature would be the main source of his annual income. But the mulch film in his soil kept him from sowing, and he was on the verge of missing the planting window, jeopardising a whole year’s earnings.
When the processing plant refused to take measures, Old Li had to pay out of his own pocket—2,000 yuan handed to the village Party secretary, who passed it on to the other party. The processing plant then put up a simple screen alongside Old Li’s field. The plant had also agreed to pay for the village collective to hire people to collect the mulch film fragments blowing onto Old Li’s farmland, but after a few days there was no further follow-up—the excuse being “picking it up every day is beyond what we can bear”. The enterprise was unwilling to halt operations, yet as long as processing continued, mulch film would drift over every day. With nowhere else to turn, Old Li could only continue filing complaints with the government.
II. The Agriculture and Environment Departments’ Duel from Afar
In their replies, both stated that the pollution caused by mulch film fell outside their remit, and that they therefore had no authority to take enforcement action against the enterprise concerned, which should be referred to the other department for resolution.
The Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs quoted only the fourth sentence: “The competent departments of ecology and environment at or above the county level shall be responsible for supervising and administering the prevention and control of environmental pollution in the recovery and reutilisation of agricultural film.”
In other words, in the chain of inadequate mulch film recovery leading to pollution, each saw only the other’s dereliction and turned a blind eye to its own responsibilities.
Second, one point on which the two departments clashed from across the bureaucratic divide was this: is the mulch film polluting Old Li’s farmland still legally “mulch film”?
The Bureau of Ecology and Environment suggested handling the matter under Article 88 of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Soil Pollution: “Where producers, sellers or users of agricultural inputs fail to recover, in a timely manner as prescribed, packaging waste or agricultural film from fertilisers and other agricultural inputs … the competent departments of agriculture and rural affairs of local people’s governments shall order rectification.”
The Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs responded, however, that the feed-processing enterprise was not a producer, seller or user of mulch film, and therefore “our unit has no legal basis for taking action.” It went on to cite Article 102 of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste, contending that this constituted “solid waste pollution” and that the ecology and environment department should impose a penalty.
In other words: in this case, what had blown onto Old Li’s land was no longer, in legal terms, mulch film—it was solid waste.
“Solid waste” refers to items generated during production, daily life and other activities that have lost their original utility, or which, while retaining some utility, have been discarded or abandoned.
But the Bureau of Ecology and Environment proved one step ahead, using the Solid Waste Law to defeat the Solid Waste Law. It cited Article 64 of the same law: “The competent departments of agriculture and rural affairs of people’s governments at or above the county level shall be responsible for guiding the development of the recovery and utilisation system for agricultural solid waste, encouraging and guiding relevant units and other producers and operators to collect, store, transport, utilise and dispose of agricultural solid waste in accordance with the law, strengthening supervision and administration, and preventing environmental pollution.”
To put it plainly: solid waste is under my jurisdiction, but agricultural solid waste is still the Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs’ business.
Faced with these two responses, Old Li was left wanting to weep but beyond tears. He therefore continued to raise the issue through government website messages, telephone hotlines and other channels. To date, there has been no progress whatsoever.
III. Who Should Actually Manage Agricultural Solid Waste?
Yet the very presence of discarded mulch film in a processing setting was inevitably the result of inadequate mulch film recovery in the fields. In 2023, the procuratorate in Chengde, Hebei Province, ordered the local competent department of agriculture and rural affairs to fulfil its duty of supervising mulch film use and recovery, after a village’s widespread use of mulch film had caused farmland contamination.
The logic behind recovery and pollution is simple enough: if it is recovered, there is no pollution; if it is not recovered, pollution follows. Yet at the government level, recovery falls under the Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs’ responsibility while pollution implicates the ecology and environment department—the powers and responsibilities of the two departments are two sides of the same coin. When a pollution incident occurs, problems must have arisen at every stage overseen by both departments; each bears a degree of responsibility and has grounds to step in and regulate.
And yet the reality is that “both should manage it” has become “neither will.” Despite a whole raft of laws and regulations enacted by the state—the Solid Waste Law, the Law on the Prevention and Control of Soil Pollution, the Administrative Measures for Agricultural Film, and more—it seems that the more provisions there are, the easier it is for the relevant departments to find grounds to shirk responsibility.
An expert specialising in solid waste believes that the Solid Waste Law’s provisions on managing agricultural solid waste are relatively vague, leaving the actual management system for agricultural solid waste effectively a void.
Agricultural film, including mulch film, is the fourth-largest category of means of agricultural production after seeds, pesticides and fertilisers. Due to a long-standing emphasis on use over recovery, mulch film pollution in China is severe—nearly 300 million mu of land is under film mulching each year, with consumption approaching 1.45 million tonnes, accounting for approximately 75% of global mulch film usage.
Due to limitations in recovery technology, equipment and other factors, China’s agricultural film recovery and utilisation rate has long remained below two-thirds. In 2017, the former Ministry of Agriculture issued the Action Plan for Agricultural Film Recovery, launching the construction of 100 mulch film management demonstration counties in the northwestern region and setting a target for the same-season mulch film recovery rate in those counties to exceed 80% within two to three years.
Although concrete action on mulch film management was finally taken, this addressed only “same-season” recovery. China’s accumulated mulch film residue over the years has already exceeded one million tonnes.
According to 2016 monitoring data from the Ministry of Agriculture, all farmland soil under film mulching in China has varying degrees of mulch film residue; in some localised areas, the average residue per mu reaches 4–20 kilograms, with individual plots exceeding 30 kilograms—equivalent to six layers of mulch film. Residual mulch film damages soil structure, affects crop germination, impedes root growth and reduces crop yields. No authoritative data yet exists on the direct economic losses to agricultural production caused by mulch film accumulated over the years on a national scale.
Furthermore, a 2019 paper by Zhang Bin and others from the Research Centre on Rural Economy, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, noted that mulch film residue outside the national demonstration project areas is very pronounced, ultra-thin mulch film remains widely available on the market, and farmers have little enthusiasm for recovering residual film.
In a paper, Yan Changrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, once estimated that the cost of removing mulch film from groundnut haulms for use as livestock feed is approximately 30–50 yuan per mu. Yet this cost is rarely borne by anyone, which means mulch film escapes into the environment and becomes a significant source of plastic pollution.
When mulch film gets mixed into feed, it has numerous detrimental effects on animal health—in severe cases even endangering life—and also undermines the economic interests of livestock farmers.
Plastic mulch film endangers not only the soil and agriculture itself; mulch film drifting in the wind also threatens public infrastructure. During the 2021 May Day holiday, a high-speed train on the Beijing–Guangzhou railway line was suspended at the Dingzhou section in Hebei Province when mulch film became caught on the catenary, and dozens more high-speed trains were cancelled or delayed as a result.
News stories like “mulch film causes high-speed train suspension” are merely the tip of the iceberg the public can learn about. Staff at the sub-district office and the Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs have both told Old Li that there are simply too many similar mulch film pollution incidents in the area to manage.
At present, Old Li’s main demand is for an assessment of the contamination on his and neighbouring farmers’ farmland, and for soil remediation based on that scientific assessment—addressing not only the visible mulch film fragments but also the invisible microplastics.
He said: “I have never stopped pressing this matter relentlessly—not only for myself, but for the villagers around me, and above all for the well-being of generations to come. Our generation should not leave our descendants nothing but a ravaged land.”
For Old Li, reaching out online for help was a last resort after all other avenues had been exhausted, yet new developments in recent days had made him even more anxious: since he turned to government departments for help, the processing enterprise concerned had accelerated its operations, and more and more mulch film was drifting out. He suspected they were trying to rush through the current batch of raw materials and then abscond. Since the processing plant had been erected temporarily on farmland, they could simply pack up and walk away without a backward glance.
Addressing mulch film pollution requires not only a clear delineation of powers and responsibilities among government departments, but also workable solutions and detailed management measures.
Who will take charge? What will be done? Old Li needs an answer, and the contaminated land needs an answer too.
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With thanks to Zhang Miao, Liu Jinmei, Tian Jing and Zhou Ya
for their help during the writing of this article
Editor: Foodthink