Agriculture — a pivotal point in human evolution. Where small tribes of gatherer hunters transitioned into farming and producing livestock which allowed larger congregations of humans to occur. This eventually became the building blocks for cities and large aggregation of humans in a set space. However, with these large population, came a lot of mouths to feed. This is where sustainable agriculture came into place. Or rather, unsustainable agriculture that led us to the current day and working towards a future where sustainable agriculture is ideal.
Currently, the model of food production is Monocultures — vast fields/acres of one single crop. While it might be easy and cheap to cultivate at first, the expenses pile up over time. The soil gets depleted of nutrients and turnover time is slow. The march towards climate change has shifted growing ranges so some acres of land might not be ideal for a certain monoculture anymore.
But the most important and deadly thing about monocultures is their lack of genetic diversity and susceptibility to disease and pests. If a specialized pest/disease (Panama Disease) that targeted a specific monoculture (bananas) and is incredibly efficient, the entire monoculture could go extinct which can cause detrimental socioeconomic impacts. Not to mention, the diseases/ pests could undergo evolution via natural selection to evolve traits that make them more resistant against chemical defenses and biological defenses from humans protecting their crops. Humans would have to develop more and more defense strategies to combat against the pest/diseases and it would cost millions, if not billions of dollars.
If the banana monoculture were to go extinct in the present (it already has once in the past with another, tastier species of banana but apparently humans don’t learn from the past), it would cause the concern of food security to shoot up among the public. However, the people in charge wouldn’t do jack squat about it. After all, an extinction event of the previous banana cultivar has already occurred where the same fungal pathogen that’s currently threatening our banana crops, decimated the previous one to the point where it wasn’t sustainable to grow them commercially anymore. But even after that, nothing has changed in terms of how humans are managing the monoculture.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 