Food Production

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Why is food production important?

The Agricultural System

Agriculture: the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products.
synonyms: farming, cultivation

Agriculture can be described as a system:

System diagram

Agricultural System diagram

Commercial and subsistence farming

Using pages 182 to 186 of your textbook create a mind map of the differences between:

Commercial and subsistence farming
Intensive and extensive farming

You can create this either by paper on using the interactive mind map generator on ExamTime.

How to create a Mindmap

Intensive Vs Extensive Agriculture

Commercial VS Subsistence Agriculture

Using your text book page 184 -186 read through and make some notes on the different factors that influence the inputs on agricultural land use. Divide these up into the following categories:

Physical Factors	Economic Factors	Social/Cultural factors	Political factors
Example: The environment	Example: The cost of growing certain crops	Example: Who owns the land?	Example: Income supplements

Play Game

Farming Types - Case study Project

This task should take no more than 4 sides of A4 and be completed on your computers.

1. Briefly (using bullet points) explain the Farming Types:

Commercial
Subsistence
Arable
Pastoral
Mixed
Intensive
Extensive

2. Create a case study on an agricultural system.
Intensive rice production in the lower Ganges valley
State:

The location of the lower Ganges valley.
The contribution of rice to the diet of people in the region.
The temperature conditions of the region.
The rainfall of the region.
The amount of water required to produce one kilogram of rice.
The name given to a levelled section of a hilly cultivated area.
The name given to flooded parcels of land.
The name given to the seasonal rainfall occurring in the region.
The draft animal used in the fields.
The average number of hours per year required to farm one hectare of land.
Why is rice cultivation in the area considered to be an intensive form of agriculture ?
Why is the physical environment good for rice cultivation?
Describe the inputs, process and outputs of this type of agriculture. Draw them in a systems diagram.

Food Shortages

Global Hunger Map Link

Complete the following worksheet

food_shortages.docx
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Causes of food shortages

Natural

Temperature: Temperatures that are too hot or too cold can both kill crops and animals. Most crops need steady and reliable temperatures.
Droughts: If there is a shortage of rainfall then most crops will die or need extra irrigation. If water to irrigate is not available then crops will begin to die and yields reduce.
Flooding: Although all crops need rainfall, especially things like rice, too much rainfall can flood and kill crops or wash away topsoil reducing the soils fertility. (El Salvador Counts Cost as Crops are Destroyed by Floods - BBC article)
Natural Disasters: Natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis and volcanoes can destroy large areas of agricultural land. They can also kill or injure farmers. Both factors reduce yields.
Soil fertility: If soil is infertile because the bedrock contains few minerals or there is no flora and fauna to provide a humus layer then it can be hard to cultivate the land and lead to low yields.
Pests: Various pests such as locust swarms, birds etc can eat crops and reduce yields.

Human

Overpopulation: The growing population of the world means that demand for food is increasing. Unfortunately the supply of food is not always matching this demand. This is a problem that Malthus predicted.
Overgrazing: By trying to graze too many cattle on land, all the vegetation can be eaten. This reduces the integrity of the soil and can cause topsoil erosion and soil degradation.
Overcultivation: Trying to grow much on land can cause its degradation by using all the nutrients and not giving them time to recover. If the land becomes degraded then the yields decline.
Deforestation: By deforesting large areas of woodland, then again the integrity of the soil can be damaged as well as its source of nutrients. This can cause soil degradation and erosion, both leading to reduced yields.
Pollution: Farming and industrial pollution can both degrade the land and reduce yields of crops.
Conflict: When fighting takes place, it is often men that fight removing them from farming duties and therefore reducing yield. Also conflict can also make the land too dangerous to farm (mines) or degrade the soil because of chemical or biological warfare.
Corruption: Sometimes government officials or armies can use crops for themselves or their own needs leading the general population to go hungry.
Low capital investment: Not investing enough money into the infrastructure needed to sustain agriculture such as roads, storage facilities, machinery, seeds etc. This means that agriculture will not develop in line with population growth

Effects of food shortages

"A famine is a widespread scarcity of food."
Photograph by Gareth Jones showing starving children during the Soviet famine of 1932–33

Marasmus

Marasmus is a form of severe malnutrition characterized by energy deficiency. A child with marasmus looks emaciated. Body weight is reduced to less than 60% of the normal (expected) body weight for the age.

Kwashiorkor

Kwashiorkor is a form of severe protein malnutrition characterized by edema, irritability, anorexia, ulcerating dermatoses, and an enlarged liver with fatty infiltrates. Sufficient calorie intake, but with insufficient protein consumption.

Possible solutions to food shortages

Using your textbooks page 190 to 192, complete the activities at the end of the unit.

Case Study:
A region suffering from food shortages – Sudan and South Sudan
State:

The year when the single country of Sudan divided to become Sudan and South
Sudan.
The two main reasons for famine in the region.
The duration of conflict in the region.
The natural resource which was a significant reason for the conflict.
The number of people displaced by the conflict.
The number of people who died from hunger and associated diseases.
The UN organisation that has delivered vital food supplies to the region.
A problem associated with delivering food supplies.
The number of people in South Sudan forecast to be short of food in 2013.
The proportion of South Sudan’s population forecast to be short of food.