Monoculture Quotes

“Spraying to kill trees and and raspberry bushes after a clear-cut merely looks unaesthetic for a short time, but tree plantations are deliberate ecodeath. Yet, tree planting is often pictorially advertised on television and in national magazines by focusing on cupped caring hands around a seedling. But forests do not need this godlike interference... Planting tree plantations is permanent deforestation... The extensive planting of just one exotic species removes thousands of native species.”
― Bernd Heinrich, The Trees in My Forest

“The cultivation of a single staple grain was, in itself, an important step in legibility and hence, appropriation. Monoculture fosters uniformity at many different levels. . .A society shaped powerfully by monoculture was easier to monitor, assess, and tax than one shaped by agricultural diversity.”
― James C. Scott

“Monoculture wants you to forget that the joy of life is in the community of the village, where you can touch, taste, smell, feel and experience a motley potpourri of cultural vicissitudes.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“The dream of control is seductive but it leads to monoculture in the field and fortified white bread in the supermarket.”
― Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

“In some places lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing the sugar beet, perhaps the lest nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious. (221)”
― Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red

“Every new step in the direction of simplification – toward monoculture, say, ore genetically identical plants – leads to unimaginable new complexities.(intended as challenges)”
― Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

“A researcher said, “A diverse nation is a more divided nation.” Who knew? Duh! Multicultural nations are always divided, and, as Abraham Lincoln told us, a House divided against itself cannot stand. Multiculturalism must be smashed to smithereens. What we need is a diverse monoculture, as prevailed in ancient Greece, with its countless city-states, all following a common religion, language and general culture. We need competitive diversity, but an overall level of cooperation and common identity. Football teams compete with each other in a league. They all obey the rules and framework of the league, and don’t go off and do their own thing. The league is a diverse monoculture. In a multicultural system, different cultures would reject the league, and create their own leagues, or even reject football entirely, and play alien sports imported from their originating cultures. It’s time people got real. Multicultural division is a disaster. Monocultural division is competitive and enjoyable.”
― Joe Dixon, The Intelligence Wars: Logos Versus Mythos

“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it's a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.”
― Alan Jacobs