Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area. The term is also applied in several fields[vague]. It is usually developed by extensive growing farmers.
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Land Use
A potato fieldThe term is mostly used in agriculture Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is and describes the practice of planting crops with the same patterns of growth resulting from genetic similarity. Examples include wheat fields or apple orchards or grape vineyards. These cultivars A cultivar is a cultivated plant that has been selected and given a unique name because of desired characteristics; it is usually distinct from similar plants and when propagated it retains those characteristics have uniform growing requirements and habits resulting in greater yields on less land because planting, maintenance (including pest control) and harvesting can be standardized. This standardization results in less waste and loss from inefficient harvesting and planting. It also is beneficial because a crop can be tailor planted for a location that has special problems - like soil salt or drought or a short growing season.[citation needed]
Monoculture produces great yields by utilizing plants' abilities to maximize growth under less pressure from other species and more uniform plant structure. Uniform cultivars are able to better use available light and space, but also have a greater drain on soil nutrients. In the last 40 years modern practices such as monoculture planting and the use of synthesized fertilizers have greatly reduced the amount of land needed to produce much higher yielding crops. The success of monoculture cropping has produced a world wide surplus of food stuffs that has depressed crop prices that farms receive.[citation needed]
Forestry
In forestry Forestry is the art and science of managing forests, tree plantations, and related natural resources. The main goal of forestry is to create and implement systems that allow forests to continue a sustainable continuation of environmental supplies and services. The challenge of forestry is to create systems that are socially accepted while, monoculture refers to the planting of one species of tree.[1] Monoculture plantings provide great yields and more effective growth and harvesting than natural stands of trees. Single species stands of trees are often the natural way trees grow, but the stands show a diversity in tree sizes, with dead trees mixed with mature and young trees. In forestry, monoculture stands that are planted and harvested as a unit provide limited resources for wildlife that depend on dead trees and openings, since all the trees are the same size; they are most often also harvested by clear cutting, which drastically alters the habitat. Also the mechanical harvesting of trees can compact soils, which effects the under story growth.[2] Single species planting of trees also are more vulnerable when infected with a pathogen, or are attacked by insects,[3] and by adverse environmental conditions.[4]
Lawns and animals
Examples of monoculture include lawns A lawn is an area of recreational or amenity land planted with grass, and sometimes clover and other plants, which are maintained at a low, even height and most field crops Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is, such as wheat or corn. The term is also used where a single species of farm animal is raised in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
Disease
Monocultures used in agriculture are usually single strains that have been bred to be high yield and resistant to certain common diseases. As all plants in a monoculture are almost entirely genetically identical, if a disease strikes to which they have no resistance, it can destroy entire populations of crops, whereas in a polyculture, some portion of the crop will usually survive due to natural variation giving some of them resistance. There is increasing support for moving away from monocultures towards a mixture of varieties as a way to limit the impacts of disease to these sorts of crops, and some studies have shown planting a mixture of crop strains in the same field to be effective at combatting disease.[5]
There is currently a great deal of international worry about the wheat leaf rust fungus, that has already decimated wheat crops in Uganda and Kenya, and is starting to make inroads into Asia as well.[6] As much of the worlds wheat crops are very genetically similar following the Green Revolution Green Revolution refers to the transformation of agriculture that began in 1945, largely due to the life work of Norman Borlaug. One significant factor in this revolution was the Mexican government's request to establish an agricultural research station to develop more varieties of wheat that could be used to feed the rapidly growing population of, the impacts of such diseases threaten agricultural production worldwide.
Polyculture
Main article: Polyculture Polyculture is agriculture using multiple crops in the same space, in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems, and avoiding large stands of single crops, or monoculture. It includes crop rotation, multi-cropping, intercropping, companion planting, beneficial weeds, and alley croppingThe environmental movement The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green movements, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues seeks to change popular culture by redefining the "perfect lawn" to be something other than a turf monoculture, and seeks agricultural policy Agricultural policy describes a set of laws relating to domestic agriculture and imports of foreign agricultural products. Governments usually implement agricultural policies with the goal of achieving a specific outcome in the domestic agricultural product markets. Outcomes can involve, for example, a guaranteed supply level, price stability, that provides greater encouragement for more diverse cropping systems. Local food Local food or the local food movement is a "collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies - one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place" and is considered to be a part of the systems may also encourage growing multiple species and a wide variety of crops at the same time and same place. Heirloom gardening has come about largely as a reaction against monocultures in agriculture.
See also
- Crop diversity
- Biodiversity Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. The biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, which is the product of nearly 3.5 billion years of evolution
- Heirloom gardening
- Neglected crops
- Seed bank
- Three Sisters The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of some Native American groups in North America: squash, maize, and climbing beans
- Underutilized crops
- Genetically modified organism A genetically modified organism or genetically engineered organism (GEO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. These techniques, generally known as recombinant DNA technology, use DNA molecules from different sources, which are combined into one molecule to create a new set of genes. This DNA
External links
References
- ^ http://www.ag-network-chile.net/Monoculture%20Forestry.htm
- ^ http://www.umich.edu/~nre301/forestry-02.doc
- ^ Richardson, Edited by David M. (2000), Ecology and biogeography of Pinus, Cambridge, U.K., pp. 371, doi The Digital Object Identifier System is a managed system for persistent identification of content-related entities on digital networks. These entities may be content items (digital files, physical objects, abstract works), or any related entities in a content transaction (e.g. licenses, parties, etc.). "DOI" is sometimes used to mean the:10.2277/, ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 9780521789103
- ^ http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/forestry.html
- ^ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6797/abs/406718a0.html
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/19/rust-fungus-global-wheat-crops
Categories: Agricultural terminology | Industrial agriculture | Sociology Sociology is the study of social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of voluntary associations, professional bodies, groups, and institutions | Pollination
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The apple's tale, however, is also one of a developing monoculture , as only a handful of varieties are cultivated today in serious numbers. ...
Viewers get a plants-eye view in 'The Botany of Desire' Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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nicole
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:00:56 GM
Via Marginal Revolution, I read a very interesting post on Online . Monoculture. and the End of the Niche. The post is based on a paper by Daniel M. Fleder and.
Q. What is monoculture, and how has modern agriculture encouraged its spread?
Asked by Tysgirls - Fri Jun 20 19:04:10 2008 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. Monoculture is, as was mentioned, the growing of a single crop like a hectare of corn, or wheat, or a bluegrass lawn, etc. Modern agriculture though is starting to stress the importance of companion planting and crop rotation as a way to improve/ maintain the soil and cut down on pest and disease that is more prevalent in continuous monoculture. Amer-Indian tribes discovered long ago that companion planting "The Three Sisters" (maize, beans, and squash) created a better growing environment for the crops and provided a better balance of nutrients and availability of food during the season. Rotation and resting fields goes far back into antiquity and references are found in the earliest books of the Bible as law, meaning that the concept… [cont.]
Answered by mike453683 - Sat Jun 21 04:26:32 2008
