You’ve no doubt walked through farmers’ fields at some point in your life. All those fields of golden wheat or seemingly endless, undulating tall corn stalks were absolutely gorgeous, weren’t they?
Unfortunately, these crops aren’t as great for the environment as you might think. They are prime examples of monoculture, and the side effects of growing them have forever altered life on this planet.
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What is monoculture?
Let’s break this word down into its two parts: “mono” meaning “one”, and “culture”, as in cultivation. As such, “monoculture” is the practice of growing a single crop or plant species in a particular area.
A perfect example of a monoculture would be a well-kept lawn. This is completely devoid of grasses, flowers or other so-called “weeds”. In fact, the only thing growing there is a particular grass species.
Other examples include the aforementioned wheat or corn. These monochromatic farm fields are full of one crop or another, with nothing else growing in between. There is the wheat field, the carrot field, the lettuce field, etc.
This type of monoculture is efficient when it comes to industrial harvesting. After all, a modern tractor can be programmed to cut all the wheat or pull all the beets at once. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of monoculture far outweigh its advantages.
Why is monoculture bad?
There are a number of different reasons why monoculture is a bad idea, but the main one is soil depletion.
Imagine a person who has lost a lot of blood or lacks calcium after feeding children with his own body. If their iron and calcium levels are not replenished, they will work in deficit. As such, they will suffer from anemia and osteoporosis, among other health problems.
Now imagine what will happen if they continue to run out without adequate restocking.
Sure, they could eat a steak or a bit of cheese here and there, but that won’t replenish the reserves they had before they ran out. It only replenishes what they are currently using and does not fill the gap.
If this continues, their health issues will escalate until they eventually collapse. The same thing happens with soil depletion. Think of the Great Depression dust bowl and you have the right idea.
1. Soil depletion affects crop health
Take a crop like cabbage, which requires a lot of nitrogen to grow well. A large cabbage crop will deplete the soil of nitrogen quite significantly. In order to grow another healthy crop, this soil will need to be amended by replenishing its nitrogen stores.
Ideally, this is where crop rotation and fallowing practices would come into effect. After growing a goblin crop with a high nitrogen supply, the next crop would be full of nitrogen fixers.
For example, this field of cabbage should be followed by a huge crop of field peas. Alternatively, some people sow a green mulch like red clover, which replenishes nitrogen. This field is not used to grow food that year. It is sown with food plants and fed with compost.
With monoculture, however, this type of holistic replenishment does not occur.
Instead, the field is planted with the same crop over and over again, with no rest period. As such, the soil becomes depleted each year and the plants grow smaller, weaker and more unhealthy.
This is similar to how many children nursed by exhausted mothers will be smaller and sicker than children nursed by the body of a healthy, well-nourished mother.
To combat this, farmers are turning to chemical amendments instead of organic amendments. The main amendment is a chemical fertilizer that forces nutrients into the soil. This does not solve the cabbage health problem, however.
2. Chemical amendments affect the ecosystem
Healthy soil is full of beneficial microbes that nourish and protect the plants that grow there. When the soil is depleted, these microbes die. This leaves the plants vulnerable to more pathogens and predators.
As a result, farmers counteract this depletion by spraying their plants with pesticides and herbicides. Sure, this helps reduce predation and weed activity, but wreaks havoc on the surrounding ecosystem (and beyond).
If you release a drop of red dye into a tub filled with water, it will dissipate. In fact, you won’t even notice it’s been there before. Add several more drops and you might see a slight pink tint. Keep adding drops and the water will eventually turn red.
This same effect occurs when chemicals are added to soil.
Healthy soil is teeming with healthy microbes, mycelium, and countless insects. In contrast, chemical-laden soil is devoid of natural life. It contains nutrients, but it kills most insects that come in contact with it.
Yes, this means the plants will not be eaten by cane borers, cutworms and other predatory insects. But it also means that the soil will not be aerated by earthworms and that pollinating insects will be poisoned by the very pollen they are supposed to collect.
3. Chemicals Contaminate Water
When you eat food, the nutrients you consume are dispersed throughout your body via veins and blood vessels. The same thing happens all over the planet through the groundwater.
Basically, if you spray a ton of chemicals on a field, they don’t just stay in the field.
They seep through the soil into groundwater and continue to move. These chemicals are transported in streams and rivers and then into the ocean. As water evaporates into a mist and travels around the world as a cloud, the chemicals are carried with them.
They don’t just “disappear”. They are moved. The natural peregrination of every water molecule means that sprays used to water crops in Iowa will eventually affect life in the Andes, Himalayas, Tasmania, and more.
What this means for life on Earth
The result of more than 80 years of using chemical pesticides and herbicides in industrial agriculture is that rainwater is no longer drinkable.[2] Think about it for a moment. Even in the most remote regions of the planet, the rain that falls is too laden with chemicals to be safe for human or animal consumption.
The fruits and vegetables we eat contain on average 60 to 90% water. If you eat animal protein, you know that there is also water in their tissues. Humans need to consume a minimum of 32 ounces of water daily to survive. In fact, all life on earth needs water just to continue to exist.
Sure, some species can go years without water while sleeping, but eventually they will die without it. But now every life form on the planet is affected by the chemicals in the very water that keeps them alive.
Remember that life also feeds on life. Insects poisoned by herbicides and pesticides will in turn be eaten by snakes, frogs, birds and small rodents.[1] In turn, these animals will be preyed upon by hawks, owls, foxes, etc.
They can also be eaten by pets like dogs and cats. Your beloved fluffy friend might die because he dared to eat a mouse that was feeding on a local farmer’s field.
Now consider that everything what you eat and drink is affected by these chemicals.
Legacy monoculture goes away
Marine biologist and eco-conservative Rachel Carson predicted all of this 60 years ago in her book silent spring. In it, she discussed the long-term effects that herbicides and pesticides used in monoculture would have.
The loss of biodiversity alone is enough to be seriously alarming. That said, there are so many other negative side effects that it’s obvious that we need to adapt farming methods to a healthier, more holistic approach for the good of all life on the planet.
This includes moving from monoculture to polyculture [3]and using techniques such as companion planting to control pests and predation.
Really, the only advantage of monoculture is that it’s more convenient to harvest. Is this convenience worth poisoning all life on Earth forever?
If you want to avoid the problems of monoculture, tear up your lawn and replace it with wildflowers. Plant many different crops in your gardens and rotate them regularly. Be sure to use nitrogen-fixing plants and cover crops to keep your soil healthy and reduce reliance on chemicals.
The more native and local plants you can use in your garden, the better. And when you are faced with pests and diseases, try to find natural remedies.
References:
- Tissier ML, Kletty F, Handrich Y, Habold C. Monoculture sowing in mesocosms decreases the species richness of weeds and invertebrates and greatly reduces the fitness of the endangered European hamstr. Oecology. 2018 Feb;186(2):589-599. doi: 10.1007/s00442-017-4025-y. Published online December 5, 2017. PMID: 29209843.
- Ian T. Cousins, Jana H. Johansson, Matthew E. Salter, Bo Sha and Martin Scheringer. Outside the Safe Operating Space of a New Planetary Frontier for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). Environmental sciences and technologies. 2022Aug 56 (16), 11172-11179 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.2c02765
- Yahya MS, Syafiq M, Ashton-Butt A, Ghazali A, Asmah S, Azhar B. Shifting from Monoculture to Polyculture Benefits Birds in Oil Palm Production Landscapes: Evidence from Mist-Net Data. School Evol. 2017 Jul 5;7(16):6314-6325. doi: 10.1002/ece3.3205. PMID: 28861235; PMCID: PMC5574735.
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