Criticizing the Cornfield

A car driving along Indiana State Road 45 on the way to Outlier Farmstead will pass several fields filled with rows of corn. This type of scenery is typical for those familiar with driving in Indiana. Farms often grow only one type of crop in a field — usually corn or soybeans — creating a seemingly monotonous landscape. But Outlier Farmstead is a different type of farm. Founded by Nicolas Garza and Marie O’Neill in 2019, Outlier Farmstead is a small farm focused on sustainability and biodiversity. O’Neill describes Outlier as a specialty farm. It grows a variety of vegetables in the same field unlike most conventional farms, such as the one across the street from Outlier that grows only corn, which engage in a practice called monoculture.

Monoculture is the agricultural practice of growing only one crop in a field at a time. This practice is common in the United States, where around 440 million acres of land is used for monoculture (Jacobo, 2021). Monoculture is unhealthy for the soil and the environment, however. When the same plants are grown over and over in the same field, the soil loses nutrients because certain plants use certain nutrients from the soil. When only one variety of plant is grown in a field, the nutrients that crop uses will be stripped from the soil (Altieri, 2009). This decrease in soil health due to monoculture leads to smaller crop yields from those fields. Biodiversity is critical in soil health, and because monocultures are not diverse, the soil in fields used for growing only one crop are less healthy. The use of monocultures was found to be one of the causes for the erosion of soil diversity, insect diversity and genetic resources such as livestock and plants (Thrupp, 2000). Therefore, monoculture farming is directly linked to a decrease in soil health and a loss of biodiversity in the environment.

Monoculture farming is highly connected to the current agricultural landscape of the United States, which is extremely focused on specialization and mechanization. Indiana University Professor James Farmer, an expert in sustainable agriculture, said there is an old adage that says diversity is stability. Because of the use of monocultures and nearly identical GMO seeds in conventional farming, Farmer said crops have a limited genetic pool, making them less stable. “It can potentially lead to catastrophic failure,” Farmer said. “It’s not a very resilient system.” One of these potential failures Farmer mentioned was loss of crops due to blights or pests such as insects. Monoculture agriculture is more susceptible to disease and pests, meaning they often require the use of more chemical pesticides than a biodiverse system (Altieri, 2009). These pesticides are harmful to the environment because they introduce chemicals into the soil. This chemical pollution can cause illnesses and negatively affect organs such as the kidney, heart, lungs, liver and brain in livestock, wild animals and human beings (Sugumaran, 2021). The lack of diversity in monoculture creates issues that lead farmers to try to adjust the environment to support monoculture instead of changing to an agricultural practice that is more suited to environmental sustainability.

When consumers go to the grocery store, they are accustomed to seeing uniform fruits and vegetables. All the asparagus looks relatively the same to the other asparagus, and this similarity is true for most fruits and vegetables. Monoculture has led to the extinction of many varieties of crops. All the asparagus looks the same at the supermarket because farms in the United States only produce one type of asparagus instead of the 46 varieties grown in 1903, creating a 97.8% loss in diversity of asparagus plants.However, this lack of variety was not always the case. Monoculture has led to the extinction of many varieties of crops. All the asparagus looks the same at the supermarket because farms in the United States only produce one type of asparagus instead of the 46 varieties grown in 1903, creating a 97.8% loss in diversity of asparagus plants. Many common vegetables such as carrots, lettuce and onions have also seen more than a 90% loss in diversity since 1903 (Thrupp, 2000). The practice of monoculture only grows one crop in a field, meaning that less varieties of crops can be grown on the land. The movement to planting only one crop caused other crops to not be grown at all, therefore leading to their extinction. Monoculture farming severely limits the variety of plants farmers are able to grow, decreasing the biodiversity of crops.

O’Neill said biodiversity is like a second nature to her and Garza, the owners of Outlier

Farmstead, so it’s hard to imagine their farm without it. Outlier Farmstead is a small farm of a little less than one acre that is currently used to grow more than 15 different types of vegetables. The farm looks like a backyard vegetable garden on steroids. The different varieties of plants are planted in rows right next to each other, so cilantro, mixed greens and arugula are only inches away from each other. Some of the rows of vegetables are planted under white tent-like structures to protect the crops from the weather. Others, like the many varieties of kale the farm grows, stand in rows unprotected by the elements. This practice of planting multiple crops in the same field is called polyculture, and O’Neill said it is common for small specialty farms in the Bloomington area. However, few large conventional farms grow multiple crops in the same field, as most of them practice monoculture. “It’s not a good system,” O’Neill said. “It’s a broken system. And people do it because that’s what they’re told they should do.” O’Neill said she doesn’t demonize farmers who practice monoculture and that issues surrounding farming are very nuanced. “If you’re a third-generation farmer who grows corn and soy it’s like all you know,” O’Neill said. “To switch out of that is so hard.”

Even though O’Neill doesn’t blame conventional farmers who continue to practice monoculture farming, it is possible for large-scale farms to incorporate similar practices to Outlier. Tactics such as crop rotations and intercropping, another name for polyculture, are successfully used by some large commercial farmers (Thrupp, 2000). Although switching to these practices incurs initial transition costs, after a couple years these changes have proved to be profitable as well as beneficial to the environment (Thrupp, 2000). Farmer said that changing conventional farms in the Midwest from monoculture to polyculture systems was possible in theory but extremely complicated in practice. He said much of the infrastructure for farmers to make that change isn’t readily accessible. For example, a farmer who grew corn and soybeans who decided to switch to growing other crops would have to find a new processing and distribution system for their crops.  Farmer said a lot of the transition would come down to labor because different crops require different levels of human involvement. The large scale of many conventional farms is a main reason switching from monoculture to polyculture would be so complicated for these farms. Large farms are less versatile than small farms, so it would take a complete shift in the farming practices to make the change.

Promoting biodiversity in their crops helps allow O’Neill and Garza to remediate the soil on their land. Before they started renting the property, the land was a pasture for horses. Although horses are livestock and not a crop, pasturing them in the same field over and over like had been done in this field is still considered monoculture farming. The owners of the land, who live at the top of the hill behind O’Neill and Garza’s house, were looking for people to regenerate the field since the soil was not healthy for growing crops. Since the two of them were looking for land to start a farm, O’Neill said it seemed like a good fit. Biodiversity plays a large role in Outlier Farmstead’s effort to remediate the soil on its land. O’Neill said they will never grow the same crop in the same place two years in a row so that they don’t deplete the nutrients in the soil. Rotating crops helps maintain healthy nutrients on the land, but it also helps protect against pests and disease. “Pests and disease build up if you plant the same thing in the same place over and over,” O’Neill said. “And since we don’t use any pesticides or herbicides it’s important that we can manage those things in multiple ways. And one of those ways is cycling crops.” Other ways Outlier remediates its soil is by using its chickens — which O’Neill said were the best part of the farm — and working the soil with a broad fork. The farm’s 28 chickens run over the land and scratch it up which helps make the soil healthier for growing crops. Their manure also helps fertilize the field. The broad fork is Outlier’s alternative to tilling, which O’Neill said breaks up the soil structure and ruins the diversity of the soil. A broad fork is similar in design to a pitchfork. It has four prongs that go underground and slightly lift up the soil. O’Neill and Garza’s act of remediating the soil reveals the lengths that farmers need to go to in order to undo harmful effects of monoculture farming.

In addition to focusing on general diversity of the crops they plant, O’Neill said Garza is very intentional about planting crops that are native to the region. Native crops are naturally adapted to the soil and the climate of Indiana, so they exist symbiotically with the biological systems in the area. Not all of Outlier’s crops are native but many of them are. O’Neill said that when they started the farm, “Even in farming you can create systems that are based on ecosystems in the area,” O’Neill said. “You can manage your farm in an ecologically minded way.”they wanted it to be an intersection between ecology and agriculture. She said the two disciplines overlap more than ecologists and farmers want them to. The difference between ecology and agriculture is about control. Ecologists believe that ecosystems operate without the control of humans, and farming is about completely controlling the land in order to grow crops. “Even in farming you can create systems that are based on ecosystems in the area,” O’Neill said. “You can manage your farm in an ecologically minded way.”

Even though Outlier Farmstead has more sustainable practices than many conventional farms, they still grow their food to sell just like larger commercial farms. Outlier is currently selling its food at the People’s Market Co-Op and Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard. O’Neill said practically all of the food they grow is based off consumer interest. “There’s a lot of things that we could be growing that are a bit unrecognizable to people because you don’t see them in the grocery store,” O’Neill said. “It’s between how much do we want to push the bounds of what people know and introduce them to new things versus providing what they know and what they know how to use. And that dichotomy is what we think about all the time when we’re deciding what to grow as far as vegetables go.” The centrality of consumerism to Outlier’s operation displays the connection between agriculture and consumer culture. This connection is a major reason monoculture farming is so prominent in agriculture today. Farmer said that monoculture allows farmers to cut costs and create economies of scale, which results in more money for farmers and cheaper food for consumers. Economic motivations and consumerism are the driving factors behind Midwestern farmer’s reliance on monoculture farming.

The future of farming could involve much more polyculture if farmers invested in the farming practice instead of continuing to primarily use monoculture. In Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he describes a plant geneticist named Wes Jackson who is looking to convert the majority of staple grain crops to perennials (Pollan, 2006). Perennial plants are plants that live for several years without having to be replanted annually. Therefore, converting grains into perennials would mean less farming would need to occur and humans could live more off the land. Jackson’s research in Salina, Kansas, is looking to grow these perennial crops in polycultures so they can produce bigger yields with more nutritious food. This long-term project that Jackson and his researchers are working on includes corn as one of the crops they are looking to perennialize (Pollan, 2006). Jackson’s project reveals that monoculture farming isn’t the only viable agricultural practice, and a future where agriculture is less reliant on monoculture is possible if farmers choose to pursue it.

The use of monoculture farming on a large scale creates a less diverse food supply and harms the health of the soil and the surrounding ecosystem. Monoculture farming is the dominant force in agriculture in the Midwest of the United States. However, monoculture does not have to be the primary agricultural practice in the United States. Farms like Outlier Farmstead are using more sustainable farming practices to help combat the issues created by monoculture farming. The use of polyculture in Outlier and other farms helps maintain nutrients in the soil while also growing a diverse array of crops. But it’s not only small farms like Outlier that need to make the change. If the agricultural industry as a whole moved away from practicing monoculture, farming would be more environmentally sustainable.

References

Altieri, Miguel A. (2009). Agroecology, Small Farms, and Food Sovereignty. Monthly Review, 61 (3).

Jacobo, Julia (2021). Monoculture farming is another way modern-day agriculture is killing bees, scientists say. ABC News.

Pollan, Michael (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The Penguin Press.

Sugumaran, E., M. R., P., Bharathwaj, Prabu. D., Manipal, S., Rajmohan, & M., V. (2021). Glyphosate, Phorate, and Monocrotophos Hazardous Pesticide Usage and Its Public Health Impact – An Empirical Analysis. Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, 15(3), 156–161.

Thrupp, L. A. (2000). Linking Agricultural Biodiversity and Food Security: The Valuable Role of Sustainable Agriculture. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944), 76(2), 265–281.