Death By Monoculture?

This class is called Food For Thought. In this course, we talked about death. We learned about everything from the Irish Potato Famine to where certain foods originated from. In this course I encountered many struggles, one was right now during this action project and my computer wouldn't work and I couldn't receive feedback. I solved this by charging my computer when I got home and asking my parents and sister for feedback. We also did multiple FE's which gave me more insight into what we were learning. For this project, I had to write about a problem that's facing our global food supply. I brought up the topic of monocultures. These monocultures are massive problems because they make it easy for a single disease to come around and wipe out all the crops. I also talk about solutions and why they are good. If you have ever heard or even don't know what a monoculture is then kept reading to find out.

 

Did you know that during the Irish potato famine according to encyclopedia Britannica the population fell 25% in 1872? A monoculture is when you plant clones of the same plant in the entire field. The global food system relies on people all over the world to help produce food and if any place has a monoculture then the entire system can collapse because of one simple disease. Monocultures make the global food system extremely susceptible to failure and so if everyone changed to a polyculture then everything would be safer. I will be proposing solutions to SDG 2 which is no hunger.

Our food system depends on farmers to produce food. Three reasons that monocultures are not good are monocultures fail really easily according to control freaks they are 94% more susceptible than normal crops. This can become a massive problem for obvious reasons. Another reason is when monocultures destroy places they are known to kill thousands of people. A good example of this is what happened in Ireland and they lost thousands of people. The last one is monocultures use way more pesticides than average crops. All these things combined create a really dangerous crop that is susceptible to disease.

Ireland is a good example of a place that suffered from monoculture but there are other examples. California had a monoculture problem with their grapes and they were forced to replant 2 million grape vines. China also has one,“For instance, China is now a vast “sea of monocultures” dotted with little islands of native rice.” (pg. 488)

If you decide to depend on a single monoculture that could spell disaster for your country. The only way you could say Ireland addressed its problem, after the fact, was to stop planting monocultures and start planting polycultures. There is one really simple thing that we can learn from history and that is to never and I mean never plant monocultures. The safe way to go is to plant a polyculture. In case you're wondering the reason places are still planting monocultures is that they are what are considered cash crops which simply means they are produced for their money not for the farmers use.

There are a few things farmers can do to address this problem. First, I think that the government from where you're from can subsidise farmers who grow different crops so that a disease doesn't come through and wipe everything out. In the past governments have subsidized farms many times. According to Wikipedia the U.S government has given farms $1.4 billion in subsidized money. Second, Eat locally grown foods because small local farms don't grow monocultures. You might be wondering how we will get everyone to eat locally grown food and a solution is for more people to start their own gardens, especially in the city. You also may be wondering how we'll make the prices affordable, if enough people buy local then the prices will start decreasing since the farmers are getting more business. Third, don't buy from places that plant monocultures because it supports these farms and allows them to keep growing monocultures.

Our planet can't afford a mess up to the scale the Irish did, it wasn't just the Irish people's fault that they're crops messed up but I just am pointing out how disastrous it was. So we should never grow a monoculture. What you should take from this is that the best way to avoid the effects of planting a monoculture are to plant a polyculture. Polycultures are way safer and they create a nice variety of plants for people. Polycultures don't use nearly as many pesticides as a monoculture because they aren't as susceptible to disease as monocultures are. One way for you to support polycultures is by buying local since local farms aren't normally monocultures and you won't be supporting a farm that relies on a monoculture crop.

It will be addressing SDG 2 because it is zero hunger and if we find a more sustainable way to produce food then we will be able to feed everyone. When you're in a grocery store and are ready to pick up the cheap generic potato remember how many people died from something just like that.


Kniss, Posted By Andrew. "The problem with monoculture." Control Freaks. N.p., 17 Aug. 2013. Web. 23 May 2017.

Monoculture and the Irish Potato Famine: cases of missing genetic variation. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2017.

Mokyr, Joel. "Great Famine." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 19 Apr. 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.

"Monoculture." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 May 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.

"6 Problems with Monoculture Farming." Regenerative. N.p., 16 Dec. 2016. Web. 23 May 2017.

"Agricultural subsidy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 May 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.