Uganda: the infiltration of plastics into agricultural fields and food raise concern
Globally, plastics are infiltrating agricultural lands—spreading across fields through fertilizers, encasing seeds, serving as moisture-retaining tarps, and accumulating as waste from various industries.
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Globally, plastics are infiltrating agricultural lands—spreading across fields through fertilizers, encasing seeds, serving as moisture-retaining tarps, and accumulating as waste from various industries.
READ MORE : http://www.africanews.com/2025/03/31/uganda-the-infiltration-of-plastics-into-agricultural-fields-and-food-raise-concern
Subscribe on our Dailymotion channel and receive all the latest news from the continent.
Africanews is available in English and French.
Website : www.africanews.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/africanews.channel/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/africanews
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NewsTranscript
00:00Plastics are infiltrating agricultural land, spreading across fields, through fertilizers, encasing seeds, serving as moisture-retaining tabs, and accumulating as waste from various industries.
00:12In Uganda, a surge of plastic bags, commonly referred to as buvera, is extending its reach beyond urban areas.
00:20Microplastics disrupt ecosystems and infiltrate human bodies, raising concerns among scientists, farmers, and consumers about their impact on health.
00:49So microplastics are created when plastic, large plastic, in the environment breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.
00:57And the real problem is that those pieces never really go away.
01:02They just get smaller and smaller, and they get into our soils, and they get into our waters, and they get into animals and the environment, and they get into us as well.
01:11Alarmingly, these bags are now appearing in remote farmlands as well, including the thick plastic used for planting coffee seeds in nurseries.
01:19So we know that microplastics are in our bodies, in our lungs, our brains.
01:23They've been found in a variety of places.
01:25What is ongoing research now is what the impact of that is.
01:30One of the potential issues is that there are other chemicals, potentially toxic chemicals, that adhere onto microplastics and can be moved around in the environment and in our bodies through those microplastics.
01:42A 2021 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows that soils receive a lot of agricultural plastics, possibly more microplastics than oceans.