Hello all! Thank you for reading this week’s Sunday Post. This week we want to look at monocultures in agriculture. Monocultures are problematic in several ways. First, as the same crop is planted year after year and are taken out, the soil loses nutrients and requires farmers to apply synthetic fertilizers, which have their own issues. Second, because the fields lay bare outside the growing season, the fields are prone to erosion. And lastly, having only one crop encourages the pest species to stay in the fields, requiring pesticides and making fields susceptible to widespread infestation. As there is no plant diversity, other species will not be able to live in agriculture fields; thus, the pests have no natural predators or prey species competing with it. This last point is especially concerning as climate change makes all areas of the world warmer and allows all species, desirable and undesirable, to migrate northward and cause pesticides to break down faster. In the US, most land is cultivated under a duoculture of corn and soy, though this is not much better. There are a few solutions. To directly solve the pest problem, one could use biological control, or releasing natural predators. One study found in 2004, the cost for developing biological control was $2 million, while the cost for chemical control was $180 million. The biological control was also 10,000 times more effective and have little side effects. However, biological control is not a complete solution, as it doesn’t solve the issue with soil erosion. Plus, there is always the risk that one chooses the wrong predator species, especially if they are not careful about species from other continents, and accidentally introduces an invasive species. Another broader solution is diversified farms, which is the process of using ecological diversity to increase sustainability by polycultures and other practices. An example would be growing shade-grown coffee in the same fields as other trees and plants that provide habitat for animal species and prevent soil erosion. Polycultures seem like the best solution, though in our opinion it is not likely to take off in industrialized agriculture any time soon. As long as there is a big demand for corn and soy for processed foods and feeding cows, as well as US law that subsidizes farmers heavily, there will be a lot of economic incentive to continue monocultures.
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March 2019
"There is nothing in which the birds differ more than man than the way that they can build and yet leave the landscape as it was before." |