Plastic Farming Around Bend for US Agriculture?
Will plastic production prosper on U.S. farmland in the near future? Could a farmer plant an engineered seed and harvest a plastic polymer? Skeptics beware, the proposition around growing a genuinely natural biodegradable plastic may be tied to a technology whose time has arrived.
On Jan. 19, 2021, Yield10 Bioscience pulled back the crop curtain on two prototype lines of camelina genetically engineered to produce PHA bioplastic within seed. PHAs are ubiquitous in nature and entirely biodegradable, greatly enhancing the appeal of agriculturally-produced plastic for a vast spectrum of industrial and consumer items. Significantly, farm-grown PHAs may have further application as a zero-waste water treatment for nitrate pollution, and as livestock feed ingredients. There remains a substantial gap between the bid and the ask, but if PHA-related technology proves economical from field production to processing plant, bioplastic—literally grown by farmers—could be massive for the agriculture industry, particularly in an age when ever-expanding synthetic plastic graveyards are a mounting international concern.
Leo’s Big Find
In the summer of 1907, Leo Baekeland, an eccentric, but brilliant inventor and entrepreneur, scratched a prescient message into a journal. Convinced he was on the course of historical change, Baekeland, 40 years young, penned the following: "Unless I am very much mistaken, this invention will prove important in the future."
In short, Baekeland, the son of a cobbler, was not “mistaken,” and his assessment was visionary. Mixing and matching formaldehyde and phenol, he created Bakelite, a plastic conducive to molding, yet resistant to heat. It was a manufacturer’s dream and quickly became near-ubiquitous in a wide range of items, beginning with telephones and radios, and spreading into every facet of modern consumer society.
Baekeland was catapulted onto the cover of Time magazine, and his magical concoction became the foundation of The Bakelite Corporation, a plastics company that tagged its mother ingredient as “The Material of a Thousand Uses,” an attention-grabbing, but hardly hyperbolic, description. Leo Baekeland largely is forgotten by popular history, and Baekelite was replaced by improved plastics of varying chemical compositions, but Baekeland succeeded in ushering in the age of plastics across the globe.
Ironically, 100-plus years after Baekeland’s fortuitous breakthrough, the overwhelming majority of all plastic produced across time—billions of tons—is still around, clinging about in some form or fashion as near-everlasting blight in the environment. According to most estimates, synthetic plastic requires an eye-popping 400-450 years for total decomposition, a near half-millennium lifespan that wreaks environmental havoc. Essentially, water bottles and containers refuse to die.
A dive into plastic waste data is sobering: Approximately 380 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide every year, and 50% of overall production goes toward single-use purposes. According to Plastic Oceans International (API), less than 9% all plastic produced each year is recycled. Further, API estimates more plastic has been manufactured in the past decade, than in the entirety of the previous century. Piling on, global plastic production is expected to triple by 2050.
The synthetic plastic pollution scenario has consumer product companies screaming for a long-term, economical solution. Enter agriculture on a white horse of remedy? Yield10 Bioscience and Oliver Peoples believe a partial answer to the ecological disaster will come directly from the North American farmer’s ability to grow a plastic that can truly disappear in short time.
Belly Up
PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates) are a class of biobased polymers omnipresent in nature. In short, plastic produced from PHAs goes belly up and returns to nature. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and no more eternal plastic graveyards.
Peoples, CEO of Yield10, was previously the founder and chief scientific officer at Metabolix, a company that sprang out of MIT in the 1990s with an objective to produce PHAs through fermentation. In 1989, Peoples wrote the original patent application to use engineered microorganisms in fermentation to produce PHAs and included a description of using the same approach to produce PHAs in crops.
“Because PHAs are polyester polymers, they can be processed into plastics,” he says. “It’s extremely advantageous because, No. 1, they are a renewable resource, and, No. 2, they are found widely in the environment and are completely biodegradable, whether dropped in a river, a field, or compost pile. Global interest in alternatives to plastic pollution has never been higher, and there’s a plastic pollution announcement almost every week, but the plastics industry hasn’t done much to address the situation.”
The bulk recycling story presents a misleading picture, Peoples continues: “It’s not a reasonable solution. Shipping plastic waste to China or other places in Asia, and paying them to landfill is what often happens, and then everyone pretends that’s recycling. Half the plastic market is single-use packaging and that involves the food service industry which is about selling the consumer convenience.”
PHAs deteriorate in the same manner as paper, wood or cotton, making the polymers a fit for food service needs. “Once in the environment, the thin film of a potato chip bag made from PHAs will quickly degrade. We’re on the path to linking ag production with an entirely new market. Plastic, farmed in the Midwest, could go right into food service use.”
“There is a lot of nuance in polymers, such as Cargill’s NatureWorks polylactic acid facility in Nebraska, and there are synthetic alternatives like Ecoflex made by BASF, but they only degrade in certain environments like industrial composting facilities, and will remain if they end up in your backyard,” Peoples adds. “PHAs are 100% natural and are biodegradable anywhere in the environment.”
Food, Fuel, Plastic
The two GM camelina lines field-tested by Yield10 produced consistent PHA in the seed at levels up to 6% of mature seed weight. Roughly 20% is the end goal, but at a range of 5%-10% in seed weight, the PHA content would be suitable for commercial activity, relative to different applications. “Although not essential for initial commercial launch, our long-term technology goal is to increase the PHA content of seed to about 20% of the mature seed weight and combine that with advanced higher yielding, herbicide tolerant varieties currently in development to drive production costs as low as possible,” stated Kristi Snell, vice president of research and chief scientific officer of Yield10, in a press release.
Camelina PHA could offer food, fuel and plastic—all in the seed. “We see a seed that is high-protein for high-quality feed, oil for renewable diesel, and bioplastic use,” Peoples echoes.
He views camelina PHA as a relay or cover crop. Expanded field testing of the two camelina lines will continue in 2021, with North American acreage in Idaho and Manitoba. Hurdles remain, but PHA potential is economically tantalizing for the agriculture industry, Peoples notes. “Camelina PHA is an exciting platform for the farmer, and it’s not just plastics. Studies show PHA in small amounts in feed could have positive impacts toward making animals resistant to pathogens and improving feed conversion efficiency.”
Further, Peoples believes PHAs could be effective in nitrate removal from waterways—an issue that perpetually bulldogs agriculture. “Everyone knows excess nitrate ends up in waterways and causes algal blooms. PHA is an exciting tool for reducing nitrate pollution in a hands-free manner. Drop PHA into a fish tank contaminated with algae, and the nitrate is converted back to nitrogen gas. The tank goes from murky to clear, and that carries big possibilities for larger applications.”
“Entirely New Crop”
In 2010, the aforementioned Metabolix established a PHA fermentation capability in Clinton, Iowa through a joint venture with Archer Daniels Midland, but the effort didn’t catch wind, Peoples explains. “We built the technology successfully and had tremendous interest from brand owners, and gas and oil prices were at first tracking high. It was promising, but in reality, it was too far ahead of its time. We tried to keep the business going, but the markets were unforgiving.”
Other companies, particularly Georgia-based Danimer Scientific, continued running with the PHA fermentation ball. Danimer takes non-GMO canola and cold presses the seeds, combining the resulting oil in a bioreactor with naturally-occurring microorganisms for fermentation. After separation, purification and drying, the outcome is a white PHA powder further shaped into pelletized resin for use is almost any kind of plastic, which degrades in soil or water within several months.
When Metabolix shuttered its Iowa venture, the company changed its name to Yield10 Bioscience, left the PHA fermentation process behind, and hitched its wagon to PHA through agricultural technology. PHA within seed is a tech ripe for today and the most cost-effective path, Peoples contends: “The time for this is now and the problem of plastic waste in the environment has come to light in the public eye. PHA production is the best way to deliver large scale at the lowest cost.”
In the near future, Peoples believes farmers will utilize PHA content as a contributing determinant of price received per bushel. “We know PHA will command a very good price structure, at least a $1 per pound and that looks quite nice versus a 40-cent commodity oil. The math looks very good for the whole value chain and farmer.”
Only 100-plus years after Leo Baekeland placed the building blocks of plastics technology, will the next phase spring from seed planted by farmers? Peoples is adamant: PHA opens untapped markets for agriculture. “The long-term future for PHA in agriculture is so exciting,” he concludes. “The future demand could be so high that we could almost never serve the markets with enough product. I see potential for tens of millions of acres of camelina PHA in North America, and this is an entirely new crop in the sense that it could impact agriculture in the same manner as the large scale commodity production of corn and beans, and do so in a way to allow farmers to gain revenue. It’s going to be an exciting story for agriculture.”
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