Monoculture

Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture, where more than one crop is grown in the same space at the same time, is the alternative to monoculture. Monoculture is widely used in both industrial farming and organic farming and has allowed increased efficiency in planting and harvest.

Continuous monoculture, or monocropping, where the same species is grown year after year, can lead to the quicker buildup of pests and diseases, and then rapid spread where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen. The practice has been criticized for its environmental effects and for putting the food supply chain at risk. Diversity can be added both in time, as with a crop rotation or sequence, or in space, with a polyculture.

monoculture,

monocropping

(rotation of monocultures)

intermingled in a field

polyculture

Oligoculture has been suggested to describe a crop rotation of just a few crops, as is practiced by several regions of the world.

The term monoculture is frequently applied for other uses to describe any group dominated by a single variety, e.g. social monoculturalism, or in the field of musicology to describe the dominance of the American and British music-industries in Western pop music, or in the field of computer science to describe a group of computers all running identical software.

The term is used in agriculture and describes the practice of planting the same cultivar over an extended area. Each cultivar has the same standardized planting, maintenance and harvesting requirements resulting in greater yields and lower costs.

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.

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Wikipedia