why only one crop (plantation )grown on the temperate grasslands of North America Europe and Asia
REFERENCE : social and political life
CLASS 8
Answers
Answer:
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Explanation:
- Allows specialized production
By cultivating the same species, farmers can optimize their operations given that growing requirements, planting, maintenance (including pest control) and harvesting will be the same across the farmed land. This allows for planning ahead, taking time off and being prepared for each growing season when it’s needed.
Specialization also enables farmers to develop in-depth knowledge and direct experience about their specific crops or livestock. This is a great advantage in preventing significant losses before they happen, as farmers may recognize warning signs of a disease right at the beginning or know how to mitigate damage caused by unexpected weather.
- Promotes technological advances in agriculture
By planting the same crop on one field, farmers created as uniform conditions as possible during any growth stage. The same distance between rows and individual plants, the same size of plants in the same vegetative stage across the field.
These were the perfect conditions for bringing in machinery to take over the tasks like planting and harvesting that would otherwise require continuous manual work of many people.
Since the time when the very first tractors plowed the fields, the technology used in agriculture has advanced even more. Nowadays, you can see the most specialized equipment that perfectly matches the needs of farmers focused on intensive production of certain crops. Take, for example, the spindle-type cotton harvester. A specialized machine that harvests successfully more than 90 percent of cotton lint from a field and is capable of wrapping harvested cotton into bales at the spot.
- Increases efficiency
The primary reason why farmers decide for monoculture agriculture is their desire to maximize output and minimize labor that is involved.
Monoculture can play to the advantages of the local climate and soil conditions. Crops that are best suited for the land are planted so that soil and climate specifications, such as winds, droughts or a short growing season, don’t impact the yield as much.
For example, continuous monocultures of wheat are cultivated on fields across Texas and Oklahoma. Farmers stick to this commodity crop out of practical reasons. These areas get too little annual rainfall to support other commodity crops without irrigation.
- Is simpler to manage
What is also appealing to farmers is the apparent simplicity and uniformity of monoculture. It is much easier and straightforward to cultivate one kind of a crop or breed one type of an animal in terms of the knowledge and experience needed to do it successfully.
This gives farmers more space to improve their system based on the experience, as they have time to observe what system works the best for the local climate and soil type.
Since farmers focus their management only on certain crops or livestock, they can afford to buy specialized machinery that will help them generate the revenue and will make their work easier.
- Offers higher earnings
60 percent of cotton production is done in the form of continuous monoculture in the United States. Years after years, acres of land are covered only in cotton. Why? Because cotton is paid more than any other crop and rotating it with different low-profit crops would turn down important source of income.
In areas where cotton prospers, it is the most preferred monocrop by most farmers. Besides paying well, its advantage is a deep root system that allows highly efficient use of nutrients from soils.
This means that nutritional needs of cotton are lower than of other crops. If farmers rotated cotton with other commodity crops like corn, they would have to add more fertilizer to supply sufficient nutrient levels for corn plants. That is why maintaining continuous cotton monoculture is more profitable for them in the end.
- Saving on equipment.
For example, wheat requires different planters than corn or soybean. Therefore, it makes perfect sense why many farmers specialize either in wheat with other cereal crops, or they follow the rotation scheme of corn and soybean monocultures that use the same equipment. It’s simply the most economical option.
Since the success of farming is determined by the local climate and soil conditions, farmers also pick crops that have the highest potential to prosper in their region, are well paid and most likely will have the highest yields. Variety of suitable crops that fall within these requirements might be limited, which is another reason why farmers prefer the simplicity of monocultures.