monoculturen.adj.
/ˈmɒnə(ʊ)ˌkʌltʃə/, U.S. /ˈmɑnəˌkəltʃər/ A. n.
1.
a. The cultivation or exploitation of a single crop, or the maintenance of a single kind of animal, to the exclusion of others. Also figurative.
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the world > food and drink > farming > cultivation or tillage > [noun] > systems of cultivation
round tilth1723
infield and outfield1733
terrace1796
superculture1835
terrace-cultivation1860
terrace-culture1863
conservation tillage1897
monoculture1901
strip farming1913
polyculture1915
sailab1916
shifting cultivation1922
strip-cultivation1932
shifting agriculture1934
strip-cropping1936
podu1938
contour terracing1939
strip system1954
swiddening1971
monocropping1974
1901 Amer. Hist. Rev. 6 489 Political interference is especially dangerous in a small country with monoculture.
1915 C. R. Enock Tropics xxxiii. 373 The decline of sugar ‘monoculture’ may have proved a blessing in disguise. Cotton and many food-stuffs are now produced.
1925 E. F. Row tr. A. Demangeon Brit. Empire 134 This plantation system, this exploiting to the uttermost of a single valuable product, involves the dangers of all monoculture.
1961 J. Russell tr. C. Lévi-Strauss World on Wane iv. 39 Humanity has taken to monoculture, once and for all, and is preparing to produce civilization in bulk, as if it were sugar-beet.
1991 Times 5 Jan. 3/2 Whitstable intends to abandon its oyster monoculture this year, to start farming mussels and clams.
b. An area in which monoculture is practised; a crop grown, or animal reared, by monoculture.
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the world > food and drink > farming > farm > farmland > [noun] > area of monoculture
monoculture1946
1946 Q. Jrnl. Econ. 60 417 Soil depletion has often occurred during and after a period of prosperity for certain cash crops..which expanded as monocultures or near-monocultures.
1951 New Biol. 10 56 Nature abhors a monoculture, and the most carefully tended orchards soon become ecological associations with distinctive flora and fauna.
1974 Nature 24 May 307/3 One is towards the establishment of monocultures of eland, wildebeest, gazelle or kob.
1989 S. B. Hecht & A. Cockburn Fate of Forest iii. 41 This pattern of burning every couple of years, combined with constant replacement of a diverse system by feeble monocultures of exotic grasses, rapidly exhausts the soil.
2. A common culture or way of life; (now) esp. a culture or way of life which is ascendant over a large (or global) area; a dominant cultural hegemony. Also: an area subject to such a culture.
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society > society and the community > customs, values, and civilization > [noun] > area of common culture
monoculture1968
1968 Listener 5 Sept. 298/1 Los Angeles's least endearing characteristic: the tendency to fragment into self-contained, specialised areas—social monocultures. Functional monocultures, too: in Los Angeles you tend to go to a particular place to do a particular thing.
1979 E. Newman Sunday Punch xiv. 120 He is part of a monoculture whose members must posture themselves as winners.
1982 E. D. Gray Patriarchy as Conceptual Trap vi. 129 Our problem now is that survival as a species on the earth is threatened by the spread of a monoculture—a scientific and industrial and militaristic culture created out of the male consciousness.
1993 Guardian 24 Aug. ii. 8/2 The airless monoculture created by the global shopping mall that threatens to entomb us.
2000 N.Y. Times Mag. 30 Jan. 11/3 We should not..assume that African audiences have been neatly assimilated into what some critics like to call the global media monoculture.
B. adj. (attributive).
Designating a region, or economic or agricultural system, that relies on monoculture. Also: designating a crop that is, or may be, grown by monoculture.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > farming > cultivation or tillage > [adjective] > systems of cultivation
Virgilian1724
open field1728
three-field1869
intercultural1878
no-tillage1911
monocultural1915
polycultural1915
monoculture1933
slash-and-burn1942
slashed and burnt1949
1933 Pacific Affairs 6 364 Mono-culture countries..found themselves impoverished by the fall in price of their special export commodities.
1944 Q. Jrnl. Econ. 58 538 Monoculture farming..commonly results in too great concentration on production for sale.
1962 Economist 7 July 60/1 A ‘monoculture’ economy dependent on only one resource for most of its income.
1989 Daily Nation (Nairobi) 26 July 16/1 In coffee, which is a monoculture crop, anything growing except the coffee trees is a weed.
1991 Jrnl. Southern Afr. Stud. 17 420 South Africa offered a host of opportunities..by contrast with monoculture sugar islands such as Trinidad, Mauritius or Fiji.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1901