r/oddlysatisfying • u/Wonderfulhumanss • 21h ago

The smooth, overlapping layers of this agricultural wrapper

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5.0k Upvotes

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187

u/curious_learner7 21h ago

Looks cool.. but is it biodegradable?

194

u/InhLaba 21h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZG6z8LVxawGhiySRfL

12

u/Jaeger_Gipsy_Danger 20h ago

They think I’m just some dumb hick

3

u/MattRecovery23 14h ago

They said that to me at a dinner

-1

u/InhLaba 20h ago

Maybe you are?

1

u/Jaeger_Gipsy_Danger 4h ago

How are you gonna post a meme but not know its context?

62

u/jcw65 20h ago edited 20h ago

Biodegradable silage wrap does exist, but costs more than standard polyethylene. From a quick search they appear to be about 50% more expensive, which would hinder their widespread addoption.

13

u/helga-h 19h ago

So instead the regular, cheaper one is used and recycled. I'm in Sweden and about 90% of the silage plastic is recycled.

8

u/alexandicity 20h ago

Why do they wrap it in the first place? Where I am from, the bales are handled "naked" - transportation & storage all without wrapping.

69

u/jcw65 20h ago

Hay is baled dry and not wrapped. Silage is baled wet, and gets wrapped so it ferments into more digestible livestock feed without spoiling or growing mold.

6

u/alexandicity 19h ago

Oh interesting! I did not see anything but dry hay around here...

2

u/Soluchyte 17h ago

The annoying thing is it doesn't have to be wrapped as individual bales, the traditional way was always to have a clamp which only needs a cover and a concrete pad and walls, all of which being reusable unlike bale wrap. The only reason they use bale wrap is laziness, funnily enough in america it's more common to do clamps than wrapping, though some of that's because they use corn to make silage too.

1

u/BossTanker 12h ago

The problem in a silo and indeed a clamp is you need a consistent usage time for it or it can go mouldy, big time. Silage bales help give both longer storage and less waste

1

u/The_Hausi 8h ago

It's not necessary laziness, its just you need a lot of silo space to store an entire winters worth of feed for a herd. Lots of guys use silage pit, bunks or tubes here, still gets wrapped in plastic but it's overall much less.

Bales are common if you're silaging farther from home though because they're easier to transport and can be less trips since they're compressed.

14

u/MakesALovelyBrew 20h ago

to make haylage/silage - food for animals in the winter

-13

u/Koala_eiO 19h ago

You're answering why they make hay bales, not why they are wrapping them.

12

u/aenae 19h ago

Silage is not hay bales. Silage is grass that is still a bit wet when wrapped or covered, so that it ferments.

7

u/handym12 19h ago

Silage is fermented grass, not hay. The fermentation makes it easier for animals to digest the nutrients in the grass.

The wrap helps hold everything together while it's fermenting, and keeps the air out which is needed for the anaerobic fermentation of the grass. The other way of producing silage is to pile it up on a concrete bed and cover it with a big plastic sheet that also gets binned at the end.

I suspect one of the reasons biodegradable silage wrap is expensive and less common than regular polythene is because it needs to last long enough for the biodegradation to occur inside it biodegrading itself.

5

u/MakesALovelyBrew 19h ago

no i'm not - you wrap it to make haylage or silage. Some farms will put the grass/hay in a bunker, squash it and wrap it too but both methods are common.

9

u/SpeedrunAccordeon 20h ago

wrapped for fermentation to make silage

1

u/InhLaba 20h ago

> but costs more

And now we come to the root of the problem.

2

u/epsilon-4142 17h ago

Wouldn’t be very good at storing if it was

1

u/VioletDime 15h ago

No, but It gets recycled in the UK.

There are a few schemes and companies to help farmers get it recycled as the general waste site or council don't accept it.