Risks of only 1 crop?

Question

A fiel planted with hybrid wheat called tritcale. It is richer in protein and is used for human food and livestock feed. List 2 risks and 2 benefits of planting only on ecrop, such as tritcale.

Answer 1

Risk of monoculture crops:
- any disease that infects one plant will quickly spread to the rest of the crop
- May need more fertilizer / pesticide as there is no other plants which may enhance soil, and no plants besides crop plants for insects to eat.

Benefit:
- May be easier to detect / remove weeds
- Greater yield at harvest if all plants are healthy

Answer 2

Risks: Crops planted repetitively on the same land remove the same minerals from the soil year after year and can deplete the quality of the land. This is not a sustainable practice. Fallow periods or planting of plants that return minerals to the soil (commonly legumes) are necessary.

If this is the only crop the farmer or community depends on, (a cash crop) they may have serious problems and no longer be able to meet their needs if anything goes wrong.

What could go wrong? everyone starts planting tritcale and the price goes down, the farmer can no longer afford necessities. An insect finds tritcale tasty and multiplies like crazy and destroys the crop.

Benefits: Animal protein takes 10x more resources to produce, protein deficiency is a major problem in many parts of the world, any changes in crops we can make to help alleviate this problem is saving lives.

Answer 3

Besides the fact that tribbles love the stuff? (Trekkie joke)

Upside--its a high-yield grain plus planting only one crop maximizes economic scale/cost efficiencies. Downsinde--if you get a crop failure, your're screwed.

Answer 4

thanks to each and everyone of you for the answers.