Monoculture! Monoculture? Oh, I've heard of that.
It's like when you talk like this. No, not monotone. Monoculture. You know, when only one crop is grown in a field. To help me explain, let me introduce Farmer Monoculture.
We'll call him Farmer Mo- No, he only grows tomatoes in his fields. His next-door neighbor, Farmer Polly Culture, or Farmer Polly, grows some tomatoes in her field, but she also grows corn and pumpkins. Okay, but why would someone prefer one way of farming?
farming over another? It mostly boils down to one word, efficiency. It's simpler to take care of one type of plant.
Wait, what do you mean by simpler? This might help. Let's take a look at Farmer Mo's pets. Farmer Mo likes monoculture so much that not only does he grow only one kind of crop, but he also owns only one type of pet, dogs. So he only has to buy one type of pet food.
Farmer Polly owns owns dogs and cats and a horse. All of these pets have different needs, so she has to take care of them individually. She has to buy three different kinds of pet food. Okay, but what does this have to do with their crops? Well, the same is true for Farmer Polly's crops.
She grows tomatoes, corn, and pumpkins, so she has to add different amounts of water to each of them. Meanwhile, Farmer Moe, who only grows tomatoes, adds the same amount of water to all of his crops. his plants.
Farmer Mo has a lot less to worry about. Oh, that makes sense. Is that why you see so much monoculture? Pretty much.
Farmers today feed more people than ever, so they grow as many crops as possible each season. Since it's so much easier for farmers to grow the same kind of crop, a monoculture, than many types, a polyculture, we see a lot more monoculture in the world today. Huh, this has really cleared up a lot for me. So is there any diversity on a monoculture farm? Based on what we've said, it would seem like there isn't, but actually there can be.
Remember how Farmer Mo only grows tomatoes? Well, he still grows many different varieties of tomatoes. But Farmer Mo has a daughter, Farmer Jean, whose farm is even more of a monoculture than her dad's. Farmer Jean only grows one tomato variety on her farm.
This same relationship is also reflected in their pets. For example, Farmer Mo only owns dogs, but some are pugs while others are huskies. His daughter, however, has taken this a step farther and only owns pugs. Can you think of why it might be easier for Farmer Gene to only own pugs? Hmm.
Well, since Farmer Gene only owns pugs, which have short hair, she rarely needs to brush them. Farmer Mo will still brush his pug, but his long-haired husky needs to be brushed more often. often. But you don't rush tomatoes.
Well, no, but you do harvest them. See, before tomatoes can be harvested, they need to ripen. Since one type of tomato may ripen faster than another type, Farmer Mo has to pick the fast ripening one first and then go back and pick the other kind. Since all Farmer Jean's tomatoes are exactly the same, they all ripen at the same time, so she can harvest them all at once.
That makes sense. So why aren't all farmers like Farmer Jean? Reducing diversity too much can cause problems.
For example, have you heard about the current banana issue? No. What's happening to bananas?
I eat them every morning for breakfast. Pretty much all bananas you see in a store are just one variety, one that can be attacked by a disease from Panama. This disease is slowly spreading around the globe, affecting bananas everywhere because they're all the same variety. like one big monoculture.
Soon we may be forced to find a new type of banana. The same thing happened here in the U.S. with corn in 1970 because they were growing one variety. Remember?
I wasn't even alive in 1970. Well, enough corn died in Illinois alone to fill over 3,500 Olympic swimming pools. Wow, that seems like a pretty serious problem with monoculture. Is there anything we can do to prevent that from happening? again?
Well, we haven't had the same problem in corn since because we've diversified. For example, there are corn varieties that are specific to California or to Texas or to Kansas. We really just need to add diversity. But how? We need to make sure that the qualities we want, like increased vitamin content or drought tolerance, are put into diverse varieties of crops.
Biologists can do this in a lot of different ways, like breeding. or more precise methods. We also need to maintain a lot of different varieties of crops. Small farms seem to be much better at growing different varieties, like heirloom varieties. This is why supporting your local farms can be a way to support crop diversity.
So there is a reason that monoculture is so prevalent in our agricultural systems. We want to feed as many people as possible with as few resources as we can. Exactly.
There are problems. but they are not insurmountable.