#monocropping

Excerpt from this Mongabay/EcoWatch story:

Farms with just one or a handful of different crops encourage fewer species of pollinating and pest-controlling insects to linger, ultimately winnowing away crop yields, according to a new study.

Up to half of the detrimental impacts of the "landscape simplification" that monocropping entails come as a result of a diminished mix of ecosystem service-providing insects, a team of scientists reported Oct. 16 in the journal Science Advances.

"Our study shows that biodiversity is essential to ensure the provision of ecosystem services and to maintain a high and stable agricultural production," Matteo Dainese, the study's lead author and a biologist at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, said in a statement.

It stands to reason that, with declines in the sheer numbers of insects that ferry pollen from plant to plant and keep crop-eating pests under control, these services will wane as well. But until now, it hasn't been clear how monocultures affect the number and mix of these species or how crop yields might change as a result.

Aiming to solve these questions, Dainese and his colleagues pulled together data from 89 studies cutting across a variety of landscapes, from the tropics of Asia and Africa to the higher latitudes of northern Europe. They tabulated the number of pollinating and pest-controlling insects at these sites — both the absolute number of individuals and the number of species — along with an assessment of the ecosystem services the insects provided.

Looks like I’m moving to Norway. 

But seriously, ragweed is the worst, and while it easily outcompetes single plants by it’s adaptive abilities, it seems to struggle to establish itself in permacultured gardens that have a reliable system, the plants will work together and choke out the ragweed before it can send its devil spawn into the air. 

This is interesting and exciting, but if you had the very basic, minimal exposure to Native American culture, even if it was watching Pocahontas that one time, you may be familiar with this:

That’s the three sisters, corn (maize), beans, and squash. It’s a type of permaculture (though the phrasing seems to be still debated, I’m running with it, it’s not my area of expertise and Jake’s not home right now...), where agriculture is grown in guilds that each offer something to the environment, like putting nutrients back in the soil, stabilizing a microclimate of moisture, and creating a layered root structure that benefits the whole, rather than competes. 

So... ragweed pops in on these guys and it can’t get a hold in the ground because the network garden already exists at homeostasis and will work to remove the pest. It even works against animals and pests/bugs and/or utilizes those animals to maintain the system.

It’s almost like nature had its shit figured out and that native peoples knew how to work with it before settlers came in with grandiose ideas of ownership, monocropping, and separation from nature. 

Okay, I apologize for the sarcasm. I understand that I benefit from this system. Anyone from the midwest knows to honor the system and be respectful to all the hard work farmers do. Monocropping allows for faster, larger harvests that create cheaper produce, but also requires pesticides, and kills the soil. AND it makes plants like ragweed, that are adaptable and take full advantage of open tilled soil, capable of taking over the freaking world and I literally can’t go outside even with medication. 

A field of one crop can look orderly, efficient, and productive from the road. But healthy land is not a factory floor. It is a living system. It needs roots, insects, microbes, cover, movement, and biodiversity.

Monocropping fails because life was never meant to be reduced to one thing. The land needs variety. The soil needs life. The food system needs honesty.

Read the full Farmland Friday post here:

Monocropping, the agricultural practice of growing a single crop species on the same land year after year, has become a dominant farming strategy in many parts of the world. While it offers certain economic advantages, such as simplified farming techniques and increased efficiency, monocropping also poses significant environmental risks. This article explores the various ways monocropping impacts…