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The first decision to concentrate on one or two crops automatically means that a more ecologically sound and complex rotation of crops is not possible. A lack of farm diversification (and no farm animals) makes sense because farmers can then spend their time specializing as is done in other lines of business. A typical conventional farmer in the Cornbelt primarily grows corn and soybeans.2 The lack of rotation with a perennial sod-type crop (such as grass and legume hay that covers the entire soil surface all year long and helps build up organic matter) means that the soil is eroded more easily and groundwater is more polluted. Lack of a more complex rotation also makes weeds, insects, and diseases more problematic, requiring interventions, normally with pesticides. The reliance on two crops also means that if the prices for both crops decline to near or below the costs of production—as happened for corn and soybeans in the early fall of 2014—there is potential economic hardship for the farm. Government subsidies, including the federally subsidized income insurance program (with benefits overwhelmingly to the largest farms and the insurance industry), cushion the situation when revenue falls, such as when prices turn or a crop failure occurs.3 Thus one of the economic aspects of the irrationality of the system resulting from specializing on two crops and not spreading risk over a larger number of crops is partly remedied as a result of the political power of an agricultural lobby that includes farmers, input industries, processors, lenders, and, in this case, the insurance industry.
full: http://monthlyreview.org/2015/03/01/a-rational-agriculture-is-incompatible-with-capitalism/
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