this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
89 points (88.7% liked)

Science Memes

18291 readers
2370 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] marcos@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Hum...

Monoculture is either the same crop on a field every time, or the same crop is a very large area. A single crop in a field for one season only is crop rotation, something that is absolutely not monoculture.

And it is inherently something bad, that's how the word is defined, if it's not extensive enough to be harmful, it doesn't get that name. It may be "not very bad" and normal, but it's bad.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I believe there may be a language barrier at play here.

“In agriculture, monoculture is the practice of growing one crop species in a field at a time.”, says the English Wikipedia [1].

German Wikipedia [2], on the other hand, says

Als Monokultur […] werden […] Flächen bezeichnet, auf denen ausschließlich eine einzige Nutzpflanzenart über mehrere Jahre hintereinander angepflanzt wird […] Wenn auf einem Feld in einer Anbauperiode ausschließlich Nutzpflanzen einer Art angepflanzt werden, handelt es sich um eine Reinkultur, nicht um eine Monokultur.

Monoculture are fields on which a single crop is planted for multiple years at a time […] If a field contains a single type of crop in a single growing season, it is called a pure culture, not a monoculture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monokultur

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Monoculture is either the same crop on a field every time,

Incorrect. Crop rotation is still monoculture. Dynamic cycling is still monoculture. It only stops being monoculture when you plant and grow more types of crops from the same field at the same time.