Chemical Agriculture 204: Monoculture Failures

There are a number of examples of dismal failures of monoculture in agriculture.

Let's discuss three notable examples.

Chemical Agricuture 202: Monoculture - Limited Crop Rotation

A monoculture is the human agricultural practice of growing a single species crop over a wide area and for many consecutive years. The most common monoculture is field corn, where millions of acres per year are grown and sometimes in the same place for many years.

At face value this would seem very efficient as specialized corn planting and harvesting equipment can allow one farmer to grow thousands of acres per year. However the monoculture has a dark side which we will explore in this post.