A condition in which land or soil produces poor, stunted, or diseased crops; agricultural exhaustion or soil depletion.
Compound noun of 'crop' and 'sickness' (the state of being sick). This technical agricultural term emerged as farmers documented recurring patterns of yield decline.
Cropsickness drove the development of crop rotation and eventually led chemists to create synthetic fertilizers—a shift that fundamentally transformed agriculture but created new environmental challenges we're still reckoning with today.
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