"Systems of Sustainable Chocolate: A Look into the Effects of Monocultu" by Emma L. Klemmensen
 

Publication Date

Fall 2024

Abstract

Agroforestry has been a recent topic for its regard to both human and environmental health. This is due to the vast benefits, ranging from increased carbon sequestration to food provisions for populations. As we’re beginning to deal with a warming climate and attempting to obtain international food security, it’s important to societally consider our food systems. However, to commit to action regarding more beneficial food systems, it's necessary to first fully understand them on an ecological level. As a step forward, this study explores the differences in macroinvertebrate communities between monoculture and polyculture agricultural systems. To consider biodiversity amongst these communities, we’ve focused on abundance, richness, dominance, and evenness. Because biodiversity is a difficult metric to measure, it’s important to think of such a topic in similar regards to the unique and complicated systems that they’re a part of. Additionally, it’s important to consider the soil as a living being with its own systems which contribute to its function. In this study, three sites were identified: a polycultural cocoa chakra, a primary forest, and a monocultural cocoa farm. Because there were as few variables as possible, we can compare the macrofauna communities of these sites to determine their differences and consider soil health in relation to these results. There were a handful of significant relationships found throughout this research, including richness and abundance being much more prevalent in the polycultural system. However, due to the extreme unevenness of the polycultural data, the primary forest was found to have the most biodiverse soil under the majority of statistical measures. In all, the polycultural chakra had the highest Global Indicator score, suggesting that it had the healthiest soil out of the three sample sites. Because of these results, this study suggests more in depth research to confidently conclude biodiversity. This would include multiple testing sites of each agricultural system and expanding the study to crops beyond cocoa to have the possibility of an effect on large scale food production systems.

Disciplines

Life Sciences

Included in

Life Sciences Commons

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