Monoculture farming

Definition: Agricultural practice of growing only one crop over a large section of land

Almost all industrialized countries utilize monoculture as the major form of crop production. Monoculture is the most efficient means, in terms of both yield and cost, to produce food and fiber for large numbers of people, but some environmental concerns are associated with the practice. For example, monoculture increases the reliance on agricultural chemicals and decreases the genetic diversity of crop plants.

The continuing increase in the number of humans inhabiting the earth has placed greater and greater demands on agricultural systems to produce sufficient food and fiber to feed and clothe the population. In order to meet these demands, mechanized agriculture is utilized in countries where there is sufficient money and land to support it. Mechanized agriculture depends on the availability of large sections of relatively level land in order to facilitate the efficient operation of the machinery. In addition, mechanized agriculture relies on monoculture, the practice of planting the same crop on vast areas of land to increase the efficiency of planting, cultivating, and harvesting. Mechanized agriculture is practiced in most of Europe, many of the republics that once composed the Soviet Union, much of South America, almost all of North America, and a few other developed countries.

Historical Perspective

Throughout most of human history, farms and ranches were owned by families who primarily practiced sustenance agriculture. Each farm or ranch produced a variety of crops sufficient to feed the resident family as well as a small excess that was sold for cash or bartered for other goods or services. Because almost all agricultural activities required human or animal labor, large families were desirable. Until the nineteenth century, agricultural tools such as plows were made of wood; however, the arrival of the Industrial Revolution changed the agriculture industry just as it did almost all other industries. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a machine that could separate cotton fibers from the seeds of the plant, in 1793. Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical reaper in 1833, and John Lane and John Deere began the commercial manufacture of the steel plow in 1837. Inventions such as these led the way for the development of many different types of agricultural machinery, which resulted in the mechanization of most farms and ranches. Most agricultural enterprises in the United States were mechanized by the early part of the twentieth century.

The Industrial Revolution also produced a significant change in the social nature of the United States. The nation went from being predominantly an agrarian society to being predominantly an urban society, as many people who had been involved in agricultural production left the farms to go to the cities to work in factories.

As the population continued to grow, the selection and production of higher-yielding crops became increasingly important, and the Green Revolution of the twentieth century helped to make this possible. Biological scientists supplied basic information that allowed agricultural scientists to develop new, higher-yielding varieties of numerous crops, particularly the seed grains that supply most of the calories necessary for maintenance of the world’s population. These higher-yielding crop varieties resulted in tremendous increases in the world’s food supply. The utilization of these new crop varieties, along with the increase in mechanization, also led to an increased reliance on monoculture.

Advantages

The major advantage to monoculture is increased efficiency, in terms of both crop yield and economics. Limited numbers of people are available for work as farm laborers, and this limited supply of manual labor resulted in the development of machinery that can be used to plant, cultivate, and harvest different crops. In many instances, different kinds of machines are necessary for different crops, so if farmers grow many different crops on numerous small plots of land, they need to change the machinery being used each time they handle a different crop. This requires large amounts of time and is expensive, in both labor and equipment costs. Farm machinery is very expensive, and few farmers can afford the equipment necessary to handle more than one or two different crops. If farmers intersperse different crops in one large field, they must also expend costly fuel for their machinery while they skip one part of the field to get to another. Many of these problems have been reduced through the use of monoculture. The farmer can buy fewer pieces of equipment, the equipment does not have to be changed out as often, and large tracts can be harvested at one time without the farmer’s having to skip part of the field.

The use of mechanized monoculture tremendously increased the amount of agricultural produce available throughout the world during the twentieth century. Not only did the number of hectares under cultivation increase owing to the increased efficiency of machinery, but also the yield per hectare being farmed increased dramatically in many parts of the world. For example, corn yields almost doubled in the United States from 1970 to 2010. This increase came about for a variety of reasons, including improved farming methods, improved irrigation, new varieties of crops, the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the availability of more efficient machinery, all of which developed in response to the increased reliance on monoculture. In the twenty-first century, the highly mechanized modern agricultural unit requires relatively few employees to produce large amounts of crops for an increasing number of consumers.

Disadvantages

Although the practice of growing only one crop over a vast number of hectares has resulted in much higher yields, it has also caused some environmental problems. One of the problems associated with monoculture is the loss of genetic diversity. Farmers most often plant hybrid varieties of crops that have been developed to give high yields and to produce plants that are equal in size and other characteristics that provide uniformity in order to facilitate mechanized harvesting. When large numbers of farmers plant the same hybrid variety for a number of years, important genetic material that might provide pestresistance or some other important trait could be lost. It has been estimated that two-thirds of all seeds planted in developing countries belong to the same strains. This could prove disastrous in the future if these strains were to become infected with an uncontrollable pest. The use of the same hybrid by large numbers of farmers in a given area also results in pest control problems. Vast fields of the same crop attract large numbers of pests, including weeds, fungi, and insects. Monoculture is thus highly dependent on the use of pesticides to control these pests, and the long-term, large-scale application of pesticides could prove detrimental to other plants, animals, and humans.

The practice of monoculture generally means that the same crop may be planted year after year, with little or no crop rotation. As a rule, agricultural activity decreases the availability of a number of important plant nutrients found in the soil, and the lack of crop rotation can hasten the depletion of certain essential soil nutrients. This means that the farmer will have to apply fertilizer more often to restore soil fertility. Some of the nutrients in fertilizers, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, can end up in nearby streams and lakes, where they contribute to water pollution.

In addition, the use of monoculture can often mean that large tracts of land remain uncovered between the harvesting of one crop and the planting of the next. When soil is left bare without any covering vegetation, it is subject to wind and water erosion, which results in the removal of the topsoil. Intensive mechanized monoculture can also result in the loss of organic matter from the soil. Soil suitable for growing plants contains organic matter that will remain in the soil if part of the crop is turned back under after it is harvested; however, in mechanized monoculture, the entire plant is often removed, thereby decreasing the organic matter content over time. Polyculture cropping systems (that is, the planting of several diverse crops) avoid some of the problems associated with monoculture, but the trade-off is lower overall agricultural productivity.

Bibliography

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