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Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.
​Q. Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?
  • a)
    Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.
  • b)
    Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.
  • c)
    More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.
  • d)
    Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.
Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer?
Most Upvoted Answer
Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out...
Monoculture, the cultivation of a single crop or plant species over large areas, indeed carries considerable risks. While it allows for efficient production and uniformity, it also creates vulnerability to various threats, such as diseases, pests, and environmental changes. A single disease or pest can quickly spread and devastate large portions of a monoculture crop, leading to significant economic losses and potential food insecurity. Here are a few reasons why monoculture carries great risks:

1. Disease and Pest Susceptibility: Monocultures lack genetic diversity, making them more susceptible to diseases and pests. When a single crop dominates an area, it creates an ideal environment for pathogens and pests to proliferate. If a particular disease or pest evolves to effectively attack the monoculture crop, it can rapidly spread and cause severe damage.

2. Lack of Natural Defenses: Genetic diversity in plant species promotes natural resistance to diseases and pests. In monocultures, where only one crop variety is grown, the lack of genetic variation diminishes the chance of having natural defenses against specific pathogens or pests. This increases the risk of a devastating outbreak that can quickly spread across vast areas.

3. Increased Chemical Dependency: To protect monoculture crops from diseases and pests, farmers often resort to increased use of pesticides and herbicides. This reliance on chemical inputs not only poses risks to human health and the environment but can also lead to the development of pesticide-resistant pests and diseases. Consequently, it becomes even more challenging to control outbreaks effectively.

4. Environmental Impacts: Monoculture systems often require intensive land use, leading to deforestation, habitat destruction, and loss of biodiversity. These practices disrupt the natural balance and can have long-term ecological consequences. Additionally, monocultures typically rely on large amounts of water, fertilizers, and energy inputs, contributing to environmental degradation and resource depletion.

5. Economic Vulnerability: When a single crop dominates a region's agriculture, a disease or pest outbreak can have severe economic repercussions. Farmers heavily relying on a single crop may face significant financial losses if their entire harvest is affected. This can lead to bankruptcy, unemployment, and socio-economic instability in farming communities.

To mitigate the risks associated with monoculture, promoting crop diversity, implementing integrated pest management practices, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices are crucial. Encouraging agroecological approaches that embrace biodiversity, crop rotations, and mixed farming systems can help build resilience against diseases, pests, and environmental challenges.
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Passage IIChemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance. The evolution of the pesticide resistance is simply natural selection in action. It is almost certain to occur when vast numbers of a genetically variable population are killed. One or a few individuals may be unusually resistant (perhaps because they possess an enzyme that can detoxify the pesticid e). If the pesticide is applied repeatedly, each successive generation of the pest will contain a larger proportion of resistant individuals. Pests typically have a high intrinsic rate of reproduction, and so a few individuals in one generation may give rise to hundreds or thousands in the next, and resistance spreads very rapidly in a population.This problem was often ignored in the past, even though the first case of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) resistance was reported as early as 1946. There is an exponential increase in the numbers of invertebrates that have evolved resistance and in the number pesticides against which resistance has evolved. Resistance has been recorded in every family of arthropod pests (including dipterans such as mosquitoes and house flies, as well as beetles, moths, wasps, fleas, lice and mites) as well as in weeds and plant pathogens. Take the Alabama leaf worm, a moth pest of cotton, as an example. It has developed resistance in one or more regions of the world to aldrin, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, lindane and toxaphene.If chemical pesticides brought nothing but problems, - if their use was intrinsically and acutely unsustainable then they would already have fallen out of widespread use. This has not happened. Instead, their rate of production has increased rapidly. The ratio of cost to benefit for the individual agricultural producer has remained in favour of pesticide use. In the USA, insecticides have been estimated to benefit the agricultural products to the tune of around $5 for every $1 spent.Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic disease, are so frightening that the social and health costs of using pesticides have to be ignored. In general the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as lives saved, economic efficiency of food production and total food produced. In these very fundamental senses, their use may be described as sustainable. In practice, sustainability depends on continually developing new pesticides that keep at least one step ahead of the pests pesticides that are less persistent, biodegradable and more accurately targeted at the pests.Q. How do pesticides act as agents for the selection of resistant individuals in any pest population?1. It is possible that in a pest population the individuals will behave differently due to their genetic makeup.2. Pests do possess the ability to detoxify the pesticides.3. Evolution of pesticide resistance is equally distributed in pest population. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Passage-1 ‘Desertification’ is a term used to explain a process of decline in the biological productivity of an ecosystem, leading to total loss of productivity. While this phenomenon is often linked to the arid, semi-arid and sub-humid ecosystems, even in the humid tropics, the impact could be most dramatic. Impoverishment of human-impacted terrestrial ecosystems may exhibit itself in a variety of ways : accelerated erosion as in the mountain regions of the country, salinization of land as in the semi-arid and arid ‘green revolution’ areas of the country, e.g., Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and site quality decline—a common phenomenon due to general decline in tree cover and monotonous monoculture of rice/wheat across the Indian plains. A major consequence of deforestation is that it relates to adverse alterations in the hydrology and related soil and nutrient losses. The consequences of deforestation invariably arise out of site degradation through erosive losses. Tropical Asia, Africa and South America have the highest levels of erosion. The already high rates for the tropics are increasing at an alarming rate (e.g., through the major river systems— Ganga and Brahmaputra, in thecontext), due to deforestation and land management practices subsequent to forest clearing. In the mountain context, the declining moisture retention of the mountain soils, drying up of the ‘underground springs and smaller rivers in the Himalayan could be attributed to drastic changes the forest cover. An indirect consequence is drastic alteration in the uplandlowland interaction, mediated through water. The current concern the tea planter of Assam has is about the damage to tea plantations due to frequent inundation along the flood-plains of Brahmaputra, and the damage to tea plantation and the consequent loss in tea productivity is due to rising level of the river bottom because of siltation and the changing course of the river system. The ultimate consequences of site desertification are soil degradation, alteration in available water’ and its quality, and the consequent decline in food, fodder and fuelwood yields essential for the economic wellbeing of rural communities.=> Which of the following is/are the nor inference/ inferences that can be made from the passage?1. Deforestation can cause changes in the course of rivers.2. Salinization of land takes place to human activities only.3. Intense monoculture practice in plains is a major reason for desertification in Tropical Asia, Africa and South America.Q.Select the correct answer using the cc given below.

Passage-1 ‘Desertification’ is a term used to explain a process of decline in the biological productivity of an ecosystem, leading to total loss of productivity. While this phenomenon is often linked to the arid, semi-arid and sub-humid ecosystems, even in the humid tropics, the impact could be most dramatic. Impoverishment of human-impacted terrestrial ecosystems may exhibit itself in a variety of ways : accelerated erosion as in the mountain regions of the country, salinization of land as in the semi-arid and arid ‘green revolution’ areas of the country, e.g., Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and site quality decline—a common phenomenon due to general decline in tree cover and monotonous monoculture of rice/wheat across the Indian plains. A major consequence of deforestation is that it relates to adverse alterations in the hydrology and related soil and nutrient losses. The consequences of deforestation invariably arise out of site degradation through erosive losses. Tropical Asia, Africa and South America have the highest levels of erosion. The already high rates for the tropics are increasing at an alarming rate (e.g., through the major river systems— Ganga and Brahmaputra, in thecontext), due to deforestation and land management practices subsequent to forest clearing. In the mountain context, the declining moisture retention of the mountain soils, drying up of the ‘underground springs and smaller rivers in the Himalayan could be attributed to drastic changes the forest cover. An indirect consequence is drastic alteration in the uplandlowland interaction, mediated through water. The current concern the tea planter of Assam has is about the damage to tea plantations due to frequent inundation along the flood-plains of Brahmaputra, and the damage to tea plantation and the consequent loss in tea productivity is due to rising level of the river bottom because of siltation and the changing course of the river system. The ultimate consequences of site desertification are soil degradation, alteration in available water’ and its quality, and the consequent decline in food, fodder and fuelwood yields essential for the economic wellbeing of rural communities.=>According to the passage, which of the following are the consequences of decline in forest cover?1. Loss of topsoil2. Loss of smaller rivers3. Adverse effect on production4. Declining of groundwater.Q. Select the correct answer using the code given below.

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Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.Q. Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?a)Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.b)Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.c)More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.d)Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer?
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Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.Q. Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?a)Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.b)Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.c)More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.d)Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? for UPSC 2025 is part of UPSC preparation. The Question and answers have been prepared according to the UPSC exam syllabus. Information about Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.Q. Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?a)Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.b)Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.c)More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.d)Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? covers all topics & solutions for UPSC 2025 Exam. Find important definitions, questions, meanings, examples, exercises and tests below for Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.Q. Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?a)Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.b)Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.c)More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.d)Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer?.
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Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?a)Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.b)Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.c)More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.d)Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? has been provided alongside types of Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.Q. Which of the following is the most logical, rational and crucial message given by the passage?a)Preserving crop genetic diversity is an insurance against the effects of climate change.b)Despite great risks, monoculture is the only way to ensure food security in the world.c)More and more genetically modified crops only can save the world from impending shortages of food.d)Asia and North America will be worst sufferers from climate change and the consequent shortage of food.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? theory, EduRev gives you an ample number of questions to practice Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. 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