"I ALWAYS read the farming column with interest and was very pleased when Alex Higgs was encouraging us all to pick the litter from the verges of our beautiful county. Lots of people in Llanidloes and other areas are doing just this in response to the ‘Message in a Bottle’ campaign. This recognises that one source of plastic in the ocean is via rivers and if we can keep the source clean we can do our bit to prevent the heart breaking reports and images of sea birds killed by plastic rings, sea creatures entangled in plastic and plastic ingested by animals that are part of the human food chain.

"I would like to appeal to our farmers to please consider the discarded plastic on your farms. I appreciate how busy our farmers are when tending their animals and all the other multifarious jobs of the farming year, but once you notice discarded plastic you will see it everywhere ~ empty supplement tubs in the fields, some intact others broken into bits; plastic feed sacks blown into gullies half submerged in mud; lambs’ macs deep in the hedgerow, blue rope, orange bailer twine. All these left in the weather do not bio-degrade but break up and disperse, into the soil, into the water. "I know that China has refused to continue to take black bale wrap and this is causing a problem for removal, but we now know that our earth cannot deal with the plastic we have so often unthinkingly discarded.

"The farming lobby is a strong one and farmers are often called ‘custodians’ of our countryside. Can you lead the way? Clear the plastic from your fields, hedges and watercourses; lobby your suppliers to take sacks and tubs back for recycling or even better, to devise new packaging that is not using plastic, and make sure your farmers’ union backs you all the way.

"This is urgent. It affects us all as well as our soil, our water and other living creatures. We can no longer do nothing and farmers’ commitment to the elimination of discarded plastic would be a huge contribution valued by us all."

VERONICA GRANT

Cwmbelan, Llanidloes