Monoculture

Monoculture (from Greek: monos "alone" and Latin: cultura "Agriculture") is a name given to the regional concentration of market production in agriculture on a product, as cotton production, coffee farming or cattle, in a figurative sense also for sub-areas or towns with one-sided developed, but this crisis- prone industries, such as shipbuilding, jewelry industry. At this spatial dimension is particularly in the horticultural area a temporal dimension: So from monoculture is spoken (also Einfeld economy ) when the crop rotation consists of only one crop species.

In a figurative sense, the term is also used in other areas with a large predominance of a system ( eg, in software ).

Agriculture

Historically, the wet rice cultivation in Asia is the most common form of monoculture in agriculture. Even modern agricultural holdings are partly specialized in a few plant species. The benefits of specialization, such as the use of the same machinery and marketing structures as well as the continuing growth expert knowledge are represented by the resulting efficiency gains tend to be larger than that of a more diversified crop rotation. Land scarcity and high demand (eg also for biofuels ) also favor monocultures.

Monocultures have no effective counter-measures yield a disadvantage compared to crop rotation with several species. In the public is often still assumed that monocultures " leach " the soil, so avoid the nutrients. This view is wrong, however, because plants of each type of crop rotation, with the exception of legumes, deprive the soil of nutrients, which therefore must be supplied externally. Instead, the recurring presence of the roots of the same species in the soil promotes the development of pathogens. The resulting root infections make it difficult for the plant to take up nutrients and to compete against weeds. To counter measures mainly include plowing and pesticide use in wet rice cultivation and floods. The breeding of pest-resistant varieties has taken place so far limited.

Forestry

In forestry, spruce and other conifers are grown in monoculture in part today to supply the wood-processing and paper industry with the raw material wood. Disadvantages such as extreme bark beetle infestation or high wind damage susceptibility moves the forestry but more and more to more sustainable forms of economy. The feared in the 1980s, deforestation was another occasion for deforested forest areas less than pure coniferous forest and instead more than mixed forest reforestation ( one held at that time for deciduous trees less susceptible to the then air pollution and soil acidification).