By becoming specialized in producing only the most economical options, operating costs of farms decreased, and farm management became simpler as farmers could follow the same plans every growing season.
Furthermore, this method enabled farmers to invest into specialized technology that allowed them to use their time and resources with the highest efficiency.
No wonder that this way of farming has quickly gained popularity among farmers and has led to the development of rural landscapes in many places around the world as we know them today—vast areas of uniformly looking crops, sown at the same time, harvested at the same time, year after year.
These are the praised monoculture fields, looking neat and prosperous at the first look, yet concealing some negative aspects right below their pretty surface. Monoculture farming means that on a given agricultural land is grown only one species of a crop at a time. If two or more species are sown in the field together for example beans and corn , it is not a monoculture but a polyculture system. It is important to know that we still call it monoculture even if this single crop species is replaced by a different crop in the next growing season.
We see this practice being applied on large commercial farms often, when farmers, for example, grow corn on a field for two years in a row and in the third year plant soybean to rotate the crops. The reason why that is still monoculture farming is that there is only one species of genetically uniform plants present on the field at one time. Another method of growing monoculture crops is perhaps the one that you would imagine at first when hearing the term.
It is a continuous growing of the same crop species on the same land every year without change. Examples of monoculture animal farms are everywhere around us: farms specializing in rearing high milk production dairy cows, broiler chicken farms, sheep farms, pig farms…and other.
Unfortunately, monoculture in animal farming often equals factory farming, which is done at the great expense of animal welfare in exchange for high productivity. At this point you may not know what to think about monocultures.
Any economist will tell you that specialization is a good thing as it creates economies of scale that maximize profits and minimize costs. The same principle applies to agriculture, especially on a large-scale, industrial level. Do not forget that running a farm equals to running a business, which entails lot of responsibilities, knowledge, long-term planning and investment.
It requires a set of interdisciplinary skills combined with taking risks without being able to predict the outcome. By cultivating the same species, farmers can optimize their operations given that growing requirements, planting, maintenance including pest control and harvesting will be the same across the farmed land.
Specialization also enables farmers to develop in-depth knowledge and direct experience about their specific crops or livestock. This is a great advantage in preventing significant losses before they happen, as farmers may recognize warning signs of a disease right at the beginning or know how to mitigate damage caused by unexpected weather. Smaller variety of produce reflects increase in production at a lower cost because the equipment and farm management remain the same over the time.
Additionally, buying seeds and supplements in bulk usually means getting some percentage off the initial price which further pushes the costs down.
Yes, it was monoculture that first allowed the deployment of the mechanization in agriculture and changed the lifestyle of people in many developed countries for good. At the beginning of the 20th century, the mechanization replaced the strenuous human labor in agriculture and started the shift towards industrialization—increasing productivity, allowing more people to take on different occupations rather than just farm for subsistence, bringing prices of food down, giving rise to urbanization.
By planting the same crop on one field, farmers created as uniform conditions as possible during any growth stage. Imagine: the same distance between rows and individual plants, the same size of plants in the same vegetative stage across the field.
These were the perfect conditions for bringing in machinery to take over the tasks like planting and harvesting that would otherwise require continuous manual work of many people [1].
Since the time when the very first tractors plowed the fields, the technology used in agriculture has advanced even more. Nowadays, you can see the most specialized equipment that perfectly matches the needs of farmers focused on intensive production of certain crops.
Take, for example, the spindle-type cotton harvester. A specialized machine that harvests successfully more than 90 percent of cotton lint from a field and is capable of wrapping harvested cotton into bales at the spot [7]. Or manure cleaning robots that promptly remove manure from large stables. The primary reason why farmers decide for monoculture agriculture is their desire to maximize output and minimize labor that is involved.
It is as simple as it sounds, and it greatly improves efficiency of tasks and processes that take place during the production.
Monoculture can play to the advantages of the local climate and soil conditions. For example, continuous monocultures of wheat are cultivated on fields across Texas and Oklahoma. Farmers stick to this commodity crop out of practical reasons.
These areas get too little annual rainfall to support other commodity crops without irrigation [2]. According to Andrew McGuire from the Washington State University , annual cereal crops simply have higher productivity and are easier to manage when planted as monocultures rather than combined with some other crops on one plot. However, there is one very important condition that affects this higher yield. These crops need to be managed under the crop rotation scheme of alternating at least two different monocultures on one field.
The reason is simple and practical. Crop rotation allows soil recovery and interrupts pest cycles [3]. Examples of rotation schemes can look like this: wheat rotated with canola, followed by two years of being fallow wheat, canola, barley and fallow period [4] two years of corn and one year of soybean [5]. Rotation schemes can differ greatly, and it depends on each farmer to select the most convenient one for the local conditions. This happens because soil nutrients get depleted to the point when the production of the selected crop from that piece of land is not sufficient and plants are of poor health.
Additionally, costs are increasing because more fertilizer has to be applied and the application of pesticides increases as well. For this reason, majority of farms follow some basic rotation schemes.
This means that if farmers rotate monocultures on the same land in a sensible way that respects the soil ecology, they can achieve high yields from certain monocrops in the long-term.
It is much easier and straightforward to cultivate one kind of a crop or breed one type of an animal in terms of the knowledge and experience needed to do it successfully. This gives farmers more space to improve their system based on the experience, as they have time to observe what system works the best for the local climate and soil type.
Since farmers focus their management only on certain crops or livestock, they can afford to buy specialized machinery that will help them generate the revenue and will make their work easier. Years after years, acres of land are covered only in cotton. Because cotton is paid more than any other crop and rotating it with different low-profit crops would turn down important source of income [6].
The answer to this craziness is to develop bot organic and permaculture farming, using ancient but tried, tested and true techniques of planting crops. Organic consists of using only natural pesticides and crop rotations, and permaculture tries to mimic the natural environment that these plants typically grew in before human intervention, which means that the plant will grow to its full potential by cultivating it in its preferred environment.
Already a member? Log in to vote. More about monoculture , farming , crop , plants , organic , permaculture. Daniel Garcia January 13, , pm Vote 2. As you know, I'm trying to plant papaya trees. One of my main problems is what type of pesticide to use. Can you recommend an organic pesticide for papayas? Sorry - wouldn't be able to tell you. The farm I was on for a couple of months didn't use pesticides at all, including for their papaya trees and all they did was wait until they fell to the ground on their own.
They only had two, and I think it was more for biodiversity's sake then to actually grow them for food or profit well - they never sold any, anyways. What does climate change have to do with biodiversity? Plenty—finding new genetic traits in cultivars can produce new plants that tolerate drought. And in some areas some studies used forests as an example , we may be able to introduce new species in areas where climate change has made conditions challenging for older species.
Andrew Porterfield is a writer and editor, and has worked with numerous academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. Follow him on Twitter AMPorterfield. The GLP featured this article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Participate Newsletter Donate. GLP Annual Report. The GLP is committed to full transparency. Download our Annual Report. GLP Annual Reports. Global Gene Editing Regulation Tracker.
This GLP project maps contributions by foundations to anti-biotech activists and compares it to pro-GMO industry spending. Is monoculture a bad thing? Andrew Porterfield May 4, Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Reddit. What do these have in common?
What does the science say? Scaled up to meet the growing global demand for food, smaller scare farming would result in clear cutting of forests and dramatically reduce biodiversity, These potatoes in the second-generation Innate line of survived late blight in a test field in Pennsylvania. Unmodified potatoes were killed by the disease. Biodiversity Anti-GMO activists have long claimed that genetic modifications are responsible for the extinction of species and losses of diversity that have been plaguing the planet for some 10, years now.
Genetically modified crops grow in a dynamic environment and interact with other species of the agro-ecosystem and surrounding environment. What is the real impact of GMOs on diversity? It is easier than ever for advocacy groups to spread disinformation on pressing science issues, such as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. No, vaccines are not harmful. The advantage of such specialization is that it increases profits and reduces costs , given that no additional machinery or other resources are required except for those needed to work with this specific kind of crop.
Moreover, when a single crop is cultivated in a field, it is easier to conduct a satellite monitoring of its health and development. Also, these vegetation indices correlate with the Growth Stages feature in Crop Monitoring, which is specific for each crop.
Some types of crops, such as cereals for example, are deemed to have better yields when sown and grown as monocultures, i. However, such maximization of yields with monoculture planting can only be achieved on the condition of yearly rotation of at least two different crops on the given farmland.
In this regard, it is also worth noting that with the EOS Crop Monitoring software farmers can generate productivity maps to identify the field plots with better performance. Such productivity maps allow farmers to plant their seeds with greater precision that potentially will result in higher yields. Cultivating monoculture crops is easier as compared to polyculture ones. This relative simplicity in monoculture farming is explained by the fact that growing only one kind of a crop demands less efforts, knowledge, and resources than cultivating various sorts of plants.
For example, monoculture planting requires less machinery for soil preparation or harvesting, while growing various crops at a time requires different types of machines. The same is true for irrigation and pest control. By growing monoculture plants, farmers usually benefit from higher profits. For example, cultivating a single kind of crop that is best suited to development in specific climate conditions, allows the farmer to get better yields and, therefore, get higher income. Farmers who stick to monoculture farming face more difficulties in terms of struggling with pest infestations on their field.
Pests are most prolific on farmlands having only one single kind of crop grown on them year after year. Also, in the context of protection from field parasites, monoculture planting lacks some important aspect that polyculture farming can boast of — genetic diversity of plants.
Polyculture, for example, may provide for some types of plants on the field that repel pests. Such plants thus serve as a natural barrier to development of pest infestations on farmlands. Monoculture crops are more likely to be affected by blight or pests, as these threats can move faster through the area due to its reduced biodiversity.
In response, farmers apply greater amounts of pesticides and herbicides to protect the crop. These chemicals seep into the ground, contaminating both the soil and the groundwater. Moreover, monoculture farms tend to intensify even more the use of pesticides , as some kinds of pests survive the use of chemicals by developing resistance to them.
Later, these parasites pass this newly acquired immunity to their offspring which, in their turn, will proliferate on the given field plot even more, as their main source of food keeps staying in one place. Agricultural monoculture upsets the natural balance of soils.
Too many of the same plant species in one field area rob the soil of its nutrients, resulting in decreasing varieties of bacteria and microorganisms that are needed to maintain fertility of the soil. The production of a single plant species over a large area also has a negative effect on the structure of the underlying soil. One species of crop means that only one type of root will be available to trap moisture and prevent soil erosion , work that typically requires multiple types of roots.
Intensive use of fertilizers on monoculture fields is tightly connected with the previous point.
0コメント