In agriculture, monoculture is the practice of growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture, where more than one crop species is grown in the same space at the same time, is the alternative to monoculture. Monoculture is widely used both in intensive farming and in organic farming: a 1000 acre cornfield and a 1 hectare field of organic kale are both monocultures. It has allowed farmers to increase efficiency in planting, managing, and harvesting but it can also increase the risk of diseases or pest outbreaks.

Continuous monoculture, or monocropping, where farmers raise the same species year after year, can lead to the quicker buildup of pests and diseases, and then their rapid spread where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen. Monocultures of perennials, such as African palm oil, sugarcane, tea and pines, can lead to soil and environmental problems such as soil acidification, degradation, and soil-borne diseases, which ultimately have a negative impact on agricultural productivity and sustainability. Diversity can be added both in time, as with a crop rotation or sequence, or in space, with a polyculture.

The term "oligoculture" has been used to describe a crop rotation of just a few crops, as practiced in several regions of the world.

The concept of monoculture can also extend to (for example) discussions of variety in urban landscapes.

 

Note:   The above text is excerpted from the Wikipedia article Monoculture, which has been released under the GNU Free Documentation License.