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Monoculture describes systems that have very low diversity. The term is applied in several fields.
Agriculture In agriculture, "monoculture" describes the practice of relying on a very small number of genetic variants, or cultivars of a food crop for commercial agriculture. Modern agriculture relies on standardization on a single cultivar so that the technology for tilling, planting, pest control, and harvesting, can be used over large geographical areas to obtain an economy of scale. In the Biodiversity Action Plans of many countries, monoculture agricultural practices are defined as a major threat to species viability, especially when natural habitat is being converted to a new agricultural use. Human overpopulation is the root cause driving much of the monoculture crops which often can maximize quantity per acre of harvest. Forestry In forestry, monoculture refers to the planting of a single species of tree crop instead of encouraging a diverse canopy of trees. A diverse forest stimulates biodiversity by providing suitable habitat for different species. Some countries such as Scotland have programs in place to create incentives for landowners to plant native species broadleaf trees instead of non-native fast growing conifers. Catastrophic crop failure Monoculture can lead to large scale crop failure as this single genetic variant or cultivar becomes susceptible to a disease. The Irish potato famine was caused by susceptibility to Phytophthora infestans. The wine industry in Europe was devastated by susceptibility to Phylloxera. Each crop then had to be replaced by a new cultivar imported from another country that had used a different genetic variant that was not susceptible to the pathogen. Lawns and animals Examples of monocultures include lawns and most field crops, such as wheat or corn. The term is also used where a single species of farm animal is raised in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Polyculture The environmental movement seeks to change popular culture by redefining the "perfect lawn" to be something other than a turf monoculture, and seeks agricultural policy that provides greater encouragement for more diverse cropping systems. Local food systems may also encourage growing multiple species and a wide variety of crops at the same time and same place. Heirloom gardening has come about largely as a reaction against monocultures in agriculture. See also Sociology In sociology, a monoculture is any sort of system wherein everyone is wearing, doing, seeing, reading, watching, and thinking the same thing. Some argue that the modern ideas of political correctness and enforced multiculturalism will inevitably spawn a global monoculture, pointing as evidence to the fact that in every historical society where two or more cultures have been put together and made to integrate, they invariably form a monoculture. Computer science In computer science, a monoculture is any computer system which is nearly universally used. This concept is significant when discussing computer security and viruses. In particular, Dan Geer has argued that Microsoft is a monoculture, since a striking majority of the overall number of computers connected to the Internet are workstations and servers running versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, many of which are vulnerable to same attacks. This is in contrast to the early days of the net, when there was a much more even distribution of operating systems and hardware/processor types, and it was concomitantly much more difficult to create a broadly applicable attack. | ||||||||
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