Land Use and Agriculture in Mexico 

      Mexico uses only 8% of its land on houses, 11% on grazing and 7 % for firewood. Most of Mexico's land use goes to agriculture 74%. Growing crops is a very important aspect of mexico s agriculture, accounting foe fifty percent of agricultural out put. The main crops include corn, sugar cane, tomatoes, wheat, sorghum, lemons, limes, mangoes, avocados, oranges, beans and coffee. Mexico mainly used slash and burn agriculture for hundreds of years but recently the government has banned slash and burn agriculture so Mexicans are slowly turning toward more modern types of agriculture like mono culture especially economically successful crops like corn, tomatoes and coffee.


      Mono culture
Pros
- reduced plant competition for nutrients, space and solar radiation
- control of unprofitable organisms 
-maximize profit from growing economically successful crops
-cheaper for mechanized labor
-market driven
-cheap production
CONS
- Nutrient loss, after many times of the same crop fields may gradually lose their fertility. The result may be desertification, a situation in which land is infertile and unable to support growth of any kind.
-diseases-no genetic variance between plants 
-reliance on fossil fuels, chemicals and technology
-environmental damage
- displacement of local crops

Poly Culture
Pros
-major crop failure unlikely due to genetic variance
-rotation of crops replaces nitrogen in soil
- pesticides and fertilizers not as necessary as different plant species and animals perform these functions
- multiple crops and markets
-short, medium and long term crops grown
Cons
-more knowledge intensive
-more difficult to mechanize and there fore much more expensive.
-Erosion, when fields are used next to each other in rapid succession, roots and temporary water shortages are lost and unable to prevent nutrients from leaving the area permanently.

Slash and Burn
   Is the agricultural technique which involves cutting and burning of forests right before the rainy season to create fields. It is more common in tropical areas.
Pros
-proven more sustainable and about as productive as more modern energy intensive agricultural methods.
Cons
- deforestation- when practiced by a lot of people there is temporary or permanent loss of forest cover
- the ash of the trees that were burned return lots of nutrients to the soil
-crop off cuts are recycled on site so decomposition can occur returning nutrients to the soil
-cheaper to burn debris on site than mulch or to remove the debris off site
- biodiversity loss, when plots of land area are cleared  the various plants and animals that lived there are gone. If a particular area is the only one that holds a particular species this could result in extinction. 
- After the fire there is a spike in nutrients in soil but if no utilized the nutrients may leach and therefore reduce fertility of the soil.
- fires are risky and they may go out of control and cause damage and endanger lives and animals.