Monoculture
The continuous growing of one type of crop on agricultural land.
Monoculture is widely used in growing crops. There’s a reason it’s so common, but it has some drawbacks.
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Monoculture: The Pros
Monoculture can help farmers–that’s why it’s so widely used.
These foods are often grown in monoculture:
Images by faisalovers, Iulia Iakovleva, Alex Muravev, and Adam Zubin from the Noun Project
Monoculture helps farmers by saving them money–it’s the cheapest way to farm.
Why is monoculture so cheap?
Farmers can use one simple plan for a huge field
That plan stays the same year to year
Monoculture produces appealing, consistent, and easy-to-sell foods
Monoculture produces the most food
What All goes into a farmer’s plan?
Farmers need to plant, tend, and harvest their fields. Monoculture simplifies these tasks.
Monoculture helps farmers plant, weed, and harvest a lot of food using machines. This is far faster and cheaper than planting, weeding, and harvesting by hand.
Farmers can also use the same pesticides across the whole monoculture field.
Some of these fields cover miles and miles of land. Imagine the time and money farmers save by treating all that land in bulk!
Images by Yu luck and Gan Khoon Lay from the Noun Project
The next year, farmers save even more time and money when they reuse the same plan.
Now, that’s an efficient food system.
So, what’s the catch?!
Monoculture hurts people and the environment—keep reading to learn why.
Monoculture: The Cons
Overuse
of Fertilizer
Planting the same crop year after year takes a toll on the soil.
It wears the soil out and makes it lose nutrients.
But soil needs nutrients to grow food! Fewer nutrients = less food.
So, farmers can use fertilizer to artificially add nutrients back into the soil. This keeps worn out soil working and producing food.
Images by Tom Fricker, Made, and alkhalifi_design from the Noun Project
So what? Why should you care if farmers use fertilizer?
Because using too much fertilizer hurts people and the environment.
The other half is released into our water and air...
Images by Deadtype, Dong Ik Seo, kareemovic1000, Yu luck, and Rflor by the Noun Project
Nitrogen is important for plants, so most fertilizers contain a lot of nitrogen. Once plants have used as much as they can, extra nitrogen can drain into our water. The rain can wash excess nitrogen from fertilizers into our lakes and rivers.
Nitrogen is a good thing when it helps crops grow in our fields.
But in waterways, extra nitrogen makes too many plants and algae grow. That throws ecosystems out of balance because it reduces oxygen levels in the water.
Ultimately, this suffocates aquatic life and leads to dead zones.
The Gulf of Mexico has a huge dead zone that formed over years of nitrogen buildup. This nitrogen was carried from agricultural fields to the Gulf by the Mississippi River.
Map from Newsweek.
Nutrient runoff also affects lakes in the Upper Midwest.
Images by Mohamed Mb, Hopkins, and Saurus Icon from the Noun Project
Extra nitrogen can also volatilize into the air. This lowers air quality, causing problems for people who breathe that air.
Nitrogen in the air can also become a greenhouse gas—that means it contributes to climate change!
In case you forgot—here’s a diagram that can refresh your memory of how climate change works. More greenhouse gases = more heat trapped in our atmosphere. This diagram is from nrdc.org
According to an EPA analysis, climate change consistently impacts communities of color more than white communities.
This is because of systemic policies and structures such as the lasting legacy of residential segregation.
For example, more Black Americans live in places with high asthma rates in children or where temperature-related deaths are increasing. That makes this an issue of environmental justice, not just human health.
To summarize, the overuse of fertilizer is an issue that affects:
Aquatic ecosystems like rivers and lakes
Climate change
Human health—especially people who are already marginalized
And monoculture is a major reason why we use so much fertilizer!
Impacts
on Pollinators
Monoculture also impacts pollinators who call the Midwest home.
Most of the Upper Midwest was once a prairie, a flower-rich ecosystem that pollinators (often bees and butterflies) love.
Most of the land that used to be native prairie has been turned into agricultural fields. As you can probably guess, most of these fields are monoculture.
The yellow was once prairie. The red is all that is left now. Image from www.dnr.state.mn.us
Native prairies have lots of different flowers that bloom from early spring through late fall–which provides a steady food supply for pollinators.
But monocultures flower once a year, or may never flower at all. When monocrops do bloom, pollinators can feast. But when they aren’t in bloom, there is little food for pollinators to eat.
Butterfly image by Creative Stall
Biosecurity
& Biodiversity
A lot of pests (think insects, fungi, or viruses) can only eat one species or kind of plant. This makes monoculture more vulnerable to them.
Images by Saeful Muslim, Aline Escobar, and Olena Panasovska from the Noun Project
On the other hand, a diversified planting is at much lower risk–it doesn’t provide the same feast for one kind of pest.
That means that there is better biosecurity in a diverse field. If a pest finds the field, only a few plants will be killed instead of all of them.
This isn’t just hypothetical—it’s happened before.
Images by Lluisa Iborra, Olena Panasovska, and Alex Muravev from the Noun Project.
In fact, it’s so well-known that monoculture can lead to disease wipeouts that there’s a term for it: “monoculture effect.”
In contrast, a biodiverse ecosystem has many different plants and animals with lots of genetic diversity. Biodiverse ecosystems are healthier.
In addition, biodiversity makes it harder for pests and diseases to kill the entire ecosystem.
So, biodiversity is a form of biosecurity.
But wait! You may be thinking, “I eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables!” However, many of the foods that we eat come from just a few species.
Images by Maria Zamchy, Jane Pellicciotto, Olga, Amethyst Studio, and Prima Aryaguna from the Noun Project
The differences between genes in crops are also what make different flavors! Can you imagine how many unique flavors we could experience if we cultivated a wider variety of foods? Monoculture plantings are more concerned with profit than diversity.
Click on the crops below to explore varieties that you may not find in your grocery store:
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