170:—an important component in realizing its efficiency goals. This can lead to an increased dependency and reliance on expensive machinery that cannot be produced locally and may need to be financed. This can make a significant change in the economics of farming in regions that are accustomed to self-sufficiency in agricultural production. In addition, political complications may ensue when these dependencies extend across national boundaries.
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many small farms cannot compete with government-subsidized agricultural productions. This ironically, as Pollan argues, leads to "food deserts" in which farmers produce a certain crop that is modified to be inedible and serve another purpose; this, coupled with low government payments, drives farmers and their families into hunger.
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Journalist
Michael Pollan argues that monocropping not only depletes fertile land, but it results in overproduction of certain agricultural crops. Corn is a primary example, as its overproduction drove its pricing downward. The overproduction for low prices drives many small farms out of business, as
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A difficulty with monocropping is that the solution to one problem—whether economic, environmental or political—may result in a cascade of other problems. For example, a well-known concern is pesticides and fertilizers seeping into surrounding soil and groundwater from extensive monocropped acreage
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are three common crops often monocropped. Monocropping is also referred to as continuous cropping, as in "continuous corn." Monocropping allows for farmers to have consistent crops throughout their entire farm. They can plant only the most profitable crop, use the same seed, pest control, machinery,
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plays an important role in replenishing soil nutrients, especially atmospheric nitrogen converted to usable forms by nitrogen-fixing bacteria that form a relationship with legumes such as soybeans. Some legumes can also be used as cover crops or planted in fallow fields. In addition, monocropping
288:. For example, since 1970 the Amazon Rainforest has lost nearly one fifth of its forest cover. A main cause of this deforestation is local farmers clearing land for more crops. In Colombia, the need for more farming land is causing the displacement of large populations of peasants.
189:, citing the damage that monocropping causes to societies and the environment. Many farmers practice neither monocropping nor polyculture, but divide their farms into large plots and rotate crops between the plots to get some of the benefits purported of both systems.
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While economically a very efficient system, allowing for specialization in equipment and crop production, monocropping is also controversial, as it damages the soil ecology (including depletion or reduction in diversity of soil nutrients) and provide an unbuffered
268:. The concentrated presence of a single cultivar, genetically adapted with a single resistance strategy, presents a situation in which an entire crop can be wiped out very quickly by a single opportunistic species. An example of this would be the
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The controversies surrounding monocropping are complex, but traditionally the core issues concern the balance between its advantages in increasing short-term food production—especially in
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for parasitic species, increasing crop vulnerability to opportunistic insects, plants, and microorganisms. The result is a more fragile ecosystem with an increased dependency on
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and so rotating crops performs an important role in preventing pathogen and pest build-up. There are however a few diseases which are less severe in a monocropping system, like
496:"Oil Palm and Other Commercial Tree Plantations, Monocropping: Impacts on Indigenous Peoples' Land Tenure and Resource Management Systems and Livelihoods"
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in wheat, as the population of an organism which feeds on the disease causing pathogen grows over repeated years of the presence of the pathogen.
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Bebber, Daniel P.; Gurr, Sarah J. (2015). "Crop-destroying fungal and oomycete pathogens challenge food security".
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is not the same as between monocropping and intercropping. The first two describe diversity in
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Monocropping as an agricultural strategy tends to emphasize the use of expensive specialized
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Diversity of crops in space and time; monocultures and polycultures, and rotations of both.
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in the U.S. and abroad. This issue, especially with respect to the pesticide
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is the practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land.
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370:"Ecological Theories, Meta-Analysis, and the Benefits of Monocultures"
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498:. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Sixth session. New York: UN.
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324:"Stability Comparison of Intercropping and Monocropping Systems"
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Mead, Roger; Riley, Janet; Dear, Keith; Singh, S. P. (1986).
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510:"Deforestation in the Amazon – Council on Foreign Relations"
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The omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals
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Under certain circumstances monocropping can lead to
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Victoria Tauli-Corpuz; Parshuram Tamang (May 2007).
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16:Growing the same crop each year
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210:issues during the 1960s when
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420:Fungal Genetics and Biology
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126:(rotation of monocultures)
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152:Rotation of polycultures
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545:Agricultural terminology
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284:or the displacement of
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187:special interest groups
179:economic independence
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175:hunger-prone regions
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286:indigenous peoples
103:Diversity in space
81:Diversity in time
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540:Intensive farming
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56:monoculture
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21:agriculture
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519:2018-04-12
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375:2015-09-18
328:Biometrics
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