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Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop or plant species over a wide area and for a large number of consecutive years. It is widely used in modern industrial agriculture and its implementation has allowed for large harvests from minimal labor. However, this ratio remains true only if the accounting for labor required is limited to the number of workers employed on the farm. If the indirect work of employees involved in producing chemicals and machinery are taken into account, the ratio of labor to output is higher.

Monocultures can lead to the quicker spread of diseases, where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen. 'Crop monoculture' is the practice of growing the same crop year after year.

The term is frequently borrowed for other uses, such as raising one species of livestock in a factory farm, or even in fields other than agriculture to describe any group dominated by a single variety, e.g. in the field of musicology to describe the dominance of the American and British music-industries in pop music, or in the field of computer science to describe a group of computers all running identical software.