Farmers have three options when dealing with plastic that they use every day — burn it, bury it or send it to a landfill.

Over the next few months, agricultural experts are hoping to provide a fourth option, to recycle the material, through the introduction of a new plastics baler.

The BigFoot baler, designed by Dennis Sutton of Florida, turns large sheets of agricultural plastic into 40-inch cubes of transportable material.

Such plastic — used to wrap bales of hay, store and cover silage, roof greenhouses or protect plants in the fields, among other things — is ubiquitous on farms.

Jay M. Matteson, Jefferson County agricultural coordinator, said plastic is a "necessary evil" for farmers, an important part of their operation, but difficult to dispose of once it has been used.

"There's a recognition that there needs to be a better way for farmers to dispose of agricultural plastics," he said. "It's just a nightmare dealing with it."

Arthur F. Baderman, an outreach educator with the agricultural department of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County, agreed that disposal has been a significant problem. Burning the plastic creates toxic fumes, burying it means that it will remain in the ground and taking it to a landfill often is inconvenient and expensive, he said.

"It's been an issue in the back of everybody's mind, knowing there's got to be better options," Mr. Baderman said.

To be embraced by farmers, though, any solution has to be economical, with a minimal cost or effort on the part of farm workers.

The Cornell Recycling Ag Plastics Project has been working on a recycling effort for several years, said field coordinator David C. Cox, but it has been stymied by a lack of infrastructure and interest.

The ag plastics project is part of Cornell University's Environmental Risk Analysis Program and has major funding from the New York Farm Viability Institute.

Mr. Cox said that one of the stumbling blocks to recycling efforts was that farmers had little access to machines that could bale the material, a necessary step in the process of gathering and moving the plastic.

Recycling companies also have previously shied away from so-called "dirty" agricultural plastic, with its accompanying bacteria, molds and pesticides, Mr. Cox said.

Earlier this year, the ag plastics project was able to locate Minnesota-based AGSI, a company that recycles agricultural plastic on a large scale and was willing to take material from the north country.

The only requirement was that the ag plastics project accumulate at least 40,000 pounds, or the amount needed to fill a tractor-trailer.

"When we get to that point, they will come and take our plastic away," Mr. Cox said. "That is one market. There are others that we're working on and they're evolving all the time."

Since locating the BigFoot baler and AGSI, the ag plastics project also has worked to educate farmers about the best management practices for collecting and storing plastic.

"If farmers are able to incorporate in their routines a method of handling the plastic, it probably won't take them a whole lot of extra time" to store it, Mr. Cox said. "When they remove it from the silage bag or bunker, shake it out, roll it up in their arms and put it under cover somewhere, that's all we're talking about."

While it wasn't the impetus for the project, Mr. Cox said, a recycling effort also would help farmers deal with the open-burning ban currently proposed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

"The primary reason is to recycle this plastic regardless of the regulations. The regulations will just push it along a little bit," he said.

Mr. Cox admits that the process of recycling agricultural plastics still is a puzzle with many missing pieces. How the plastic will be collected, where it will be baled, how it can be routinely transported and whether the quality can be improved are among the various details that have yet to be sorted out.

"The process will vary from region to region depending on the collection they get together to do this, the amount of plastic available and literally who's willing to participate in this process," Mr. Cox said.

At the end of September and in October, the ag plastics program will take a baler model called BF300 on tour. While the details of the demonstrations have yet to be pinned down, Mr. Cox said the aim is to build interest among farmers about a recycling program.

"We have the tools now and we're working on the infrastructure within these communities to come together and develop a process that makes ag plastics recycling a regular component of farming. All farming," Mr. Cox said.

At a cost of up to $35,000 for one baler, it is unlikely that individual farmers will buy one for themselves but Mr. Cox said that isn't really the point.

"We're not in the business of selling balers," he said. "We're in the business of selling infrastructure to get this started."