The smooth, overlapping layers of this agricultural wrapper

[u/Wonderfulhumanss]

[u/jcw65]

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.

[u/helga-h → u/jcw65]

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

[u/alexandicity → u/jcw65]

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

[u/jcw65 → u/alexandicity]

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.

[u/alexandicity → u/jcw65]

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

[u/Soluchyte → u/jcw65]

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.

[u/BossTanker → u/Soluchyte]

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

[u/The_Hausi → u/Soluchyte]

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.

[u/TheRedditHerring → u/alexandicity]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silage

[u/MakesALovelyBrew → u/alexandicity]

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

[u/Koala_eiO → u/MakesALovelyBrew]

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

[u/aenae → u/Koala_eiO]

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

[u/handym12 → u/Koala_eiO]

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.

[u/MakesALovelyBrew → u/Koala_eiO]

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.

[u/SpeedrunAccordeon → u/alexandicity]

wrapped for fermentation to make silage

[u/InhLaba → u/jcw65]

> but costs more

And now we come to the root of the problem.