Polyculture chemicals into the environment such as eutrophication of fresh water or the presence of excess atmospheric nitrogen are greatly reduced in polycultures. Other negative impacts of modern agriculture are similarly reduced. Excessive tillage occurs in most modern agricultural practices, but removes essential microbes and nutrients from the soil that are conserved in polycultures, especially permacultures. Agricultural machinery not only uses fossil fuels and creates waste, but is more costly to farmers. Because polyculture relies on natural systems of crop maintenance these costs can be eliminated as well. Modern agriculture is also dependent on a very limited number of plant species.
Natural computing understand the essential properties of life organisms by building, within electronic computers or other artificial media, "ab initio" systems that exhibit properties normally associated only with living organisms. Early examples include Lindenmayer systems (L-systems), that have been used to model plant growth and development. An L-system is a parallel rewriting system that starts with an initial word, and applies its rewriting rules in parallel to all letters of the word. Pioneering experiments in artificial life included the design of evolving "virtual block creatures" acting in simulated environments with realistic features such as kinetics, dynamics, gravity, collision, and friction. These artificial