Unpacking the Global History of Monocultures

Dr Volodymyr Kulikov, Lecturer in Ukrainian History, reflects on a workshop held at UCL SSEES on 1 November 2024.

Walking down the aisles of a supermarket, you might think that variety defines modern agriculture. Rows of packaged foods suggest a wealth of choices, but behind this illusion lies a different reality: monocultures dominate global food production. Single-crop farming now underpins much of our agricultural system, building on the economies of scale that benefit consumers and makes agrochemical producers happy. Monoculture farming clears land for a single crop, meticulously killing anything that might compete with it. This approach, however, degrades soils and creates a breeding ground for diseases and pests that spread rapidly through one species. By putting all their eggs in one basket, producers risk losing everything to extreme weather events or diseases, reflecting the fragility of monoculture. 

If monocultures carry such risks, why do we continue to rely on them? Researchers have yet to find a satisfying explanation for this seemingly simple question. That is why Professor Frank Uekötter from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, with support from the European Research Council (ERC), launched ‘The Making of Monoculture: A Global History’ project to explore why monocultures persist worldwide. Uekötter suggests, ‘If something does not make sense conceptually, it is worthwhile to trace the path we have taken to investigate how we arrived here.’ His team of postdoctoral researchers is studying diverse monoculture examples—from California’s almond orchards to tobacco farms in Malawi and cardamom production in India. As an affiliated researcher on the project, and with the support of SSEES, I was pleased to host a workshop at UCL on 1 November 2024 to discuss our papers in progress. 

Hosting this workshop at SSEES made sense as two case studies in the project focus on our region: Natalia Ryzhova’s research on the history of soybean production in Central Asia and my own study on grain production and trade in Ukraine. Our region offers valuable insights into monocultures, as these are often associated with capitalist agribusiness, yet the Soviet Union also promoted intensive monoculture farming. Socialist agricultural enterprises advanced monocultures through large-scale, specialised farming, betting on regional specialisation and economies of scale. The fact that monocultures thrived under socialism indicates that they are not merely a product of capitalist greed. While this does not absolve capitalist agribusiness from criticism, it shows that monocultures cannot be explained solely by the free market principles. By examining Eastern Europe and Central Asia—regions that have undergone dramatic economic and political changes in the last century—we can better understand how monocultures persist across different political and economic regimes. 

The question looms: can monocultures endure indefinitely? Some believe that science and technology will make monocultures keep going, continuing to feed billions. But what if they cannot? Could we face a global agricultural ‘hangover’ with severe disasters for food security? If monocultures ultimately fails, what then? Will we be forced into a Mad Max-style scramble for food resources, or will we innovate our way to a less violent solution? Our workshop could not answer all these questions, but the project is still in progress. By the end, we hope at least to explain why, despite creating so many troubles, monocultures are still with us.