Variety is the Spice of Life

Typically, for economic reasons, people tend to plant large areas with the same crop. On the plus side, this permits more efficient maintenance, harvesting and processing. However, large concentrations of the same organism are more vulnerable to disease, insects or other hazards. To make matters worse, some crop plants may have lost their resistence to disease or insects as a result of selective breeding. Consider the lawn maintenance industry, for example.

In nature, it is possible for mature forests to be dominated by a specific tree species. However, there is still some degree of diversity in terms of the gene pool. Commercial plantations may compromise genetic diversity to achieve a "better" product in human terms. Also, some human interventions such as fire prevention or the large-scale use of insecticides may produce undesired side-effects. Our understanding of the processes at work in a habitat is still incomplete.

Large cities are human monoculture - they can increase the risk of infection or amplify problems such as waste disposal and pollution. The popularity of large plantings of elm trees in cities contributed to the spread of "dutch elm disease" and a crash in the population of white elm in North America.

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