As former President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Agriculture…is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.”
In his vision, the small farmer prevailed as the moral emblem of the hardworking American. But this image distorts itself with the realization that agriculture in this time period flourished because colonizers exploited enslaved people. Around the world, colonizers brought their warped ideas of farming to communities that didn’t need them. The ability and knowledge to grow food is, and always has been, a powerful skill.
Before widespread colonization, few American settlers knew how to grow food for themselves, unlike Native Americans. Because of this, they relied on gathering food, stealing from Native American tribes and, in some cases, learning agricultural methods from American Indians. If they were unable to grow crops, they died of starvation or disease.
While settlers learned new methods of farming from Native Americans, they didn’t use them for long. Imperialists moving into different parts of the world were backed by countries and powerful groups that sought monetary gain from colonial expansion. As a result, environmentally sustainable subsistence farming faded into the background in favor of less sustainable, more profitable plantation agriculture.
About 200 years later, those corrupt methods devolved once again with the death of the small farmer and the rise of multinational corporations running large scale monoculture. Monoculture is the propagation of a singular crop or animal, contrasting with more sustainable agricultural practices. Currently, it is the primary means of producing food around the world. From the Americas to Africa and Asia, imperialists arrived and changed the way communities ran farms that had been successful for hundreds of years — all in order to benefit European markets. Primarily, this meant changing diverse farming practices across the world to monoculture.
Now, the general public lacks the knowledge and ability to sustainably grow food, and large corporations hold most of the power over agriculture worldwide. Monoculture has expanded across the world through colonization, and its dominance has exacerbated both environmental issues and social inequalities in these places.
The environmental implications of monoculture farming are disastrous. Large crops are much more susceptible to blight because farmers grow large quantities of one type of food, making entire yields vulnerable to perishing at the hands of one pest. In an attempt to combat vulnerability, farmers utilize large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides to cultivate crops quickly while protecting them. However, soil fertility loss plagues monoculture farms because excessive fertilizer use quickly depletes certain minerals and nutrients needed to produce a singular crop. This leads to soil erosion, degrading soil so severely it becomes unusable. While diverse crops would promote healthy soil, singular crops reduce overall ecosystem biodiversity and disrupt the soil pH, mineral and nutrient composition.
Growing a singular crop is not only unsustainable, but also unhealthy since humans will consume less varied diets. Many communities, especially in impoverished areas around the world, must sustain themselves on one or a few types of crop because they are widely available and accessible. But consumption of fewer foods leads to nutrient deficiencies given the lack of diversity in diets. Poor communities are undoubtedly overexposed to this issue as cheap food often lacks proper nutrient composition, causing these deficiencies. Research shows that the nutritional value of food is also decreasing due to practices associated with monoculture, along with the haphazard application of mineral fertilizers to crops.
The United States has one glaring example of this: corn. Considering that the U.S. produced 14.9 billion bushels of corn in 2024, most products on shelves have some form of corn in them. For lower-income families, many products containing some form of corn are the most affordable, leading to nutritional deficiencies and obesity in poorer communities in the U.S.
It’s understandable that monocropping is seen as the only viable means of feeding Earth’s massive, and growing, population. At the same time, despite the massive amounts of food grown annually, millions still face starvation; society cannot grow and distribute food fast enough to meet the needs of all 8 billion humans.
However, under this system, farmers already produce more than enough food to feed every single person, yet people still starve. In 2024, 733 million people faced starvation, and there has been little improvement despite efforts for aid. Monoculture, while efficient, is a product of a colonial system, serving communities unequally. Famines are historically not caused by a lack of food, but by imperialist political mechanisms intended to oppress certain communities while those in power benefit.
The Irish potato famine in 1845 occurred less due to the blight on the potato crop and more so due to English complacency as over one million people died. Most of the Irish’s land was not controlled by their communities; it was under English rule, and the subsistence farms on tiny Irish plots of land that primarily grew potatoes perished by disease. Despite the famine, the English largely refused to help or supply any of the other crops grown on Irish land that was owned by Englishmen.
Today, similar occurrences are actively occurring in places like Gaza and Sudan. In one case, Israel will not allow food and aid shipments into Gaza, causing acute starvation for 2.1 million people living there. This has nothing to do with a lack of food or limits to agricultural production. Israel, as the country with power, is utilizing starvation as a political tool to enact genocide against the Palestinian people. In Sudan, famine rages as a result of the Sudanese civil war between North and South Sudan, which is a product of religious and ethnic conflict caused in part by British colonization.
Sustainable practices can feed people on a large scale, and implementation is possible. Already, there have been major innovations to agriculture in response to climate change, like hydroponic technology and sustainable practices like crop rotation and intercropping — all viable solutions to reform the agricultural system. Beyond that, individuals must take it upon themselves to shop responsibly and learn how to sustain themselves.
Ultimately, there are inherent flaws in the current food system. Monoculture farming will continue to degrade the environment if we don’t choose a different path. Creative solutions will be necessary to reduce the environmental effects of monocultures as well as the social inequalities of the distribution of this food.
It might be too late to return to any systems of farming from even just 100 years ago, but it is possible to reform the current systems in place. Food is political, and it always will be. We should take power back from large corporations and put it back in the hands of individual people. It should be our duty as a society with a wealthy governing body to help end famines that plague the Earth with calculated action, because we have the means to do so. Food is not inherently scarce; those in power make it scarce based on where people live and what communities they belong to.
Elena Nicholson is an Opinion Columnist from Basking Ridge, NJ. She writes about environmental issues and climate change in her column “Climate Watch.” She can be reached at elenagn@umich.edu.
