3.2 Food production Flashcards
Describe and explain the main features of an agricultural system: inputs, processes and outputs
Inputs:
labour, capital, fertilisers, machinery
climate, soil, relief
Processes:
plating, sewing, weeding, harvesting, slaughtering
Outputs:
crops, animal products, waste products (animal, pollution)
Pastoral agriculture: animal farming
Arable agriculture: growing crops
Mixed: both animal and crops
Intensive: small farm, high inputs - high yields
Extensive: big farm, low inputs - lower yields
How inputs affect the type of agricultural land use
Physical:
good climate: crops
bad climate: animals, e.g. goats
flat land: crops
mountain: goats
good soil: intensive farming
bad soil: extensive farming
Human:
close/far from market
tenure (land ownership) - big company, family farms
Recognise the causes and effects of food shortages and describe possible solutions to this problem
Causes
Natural:
- Drought (prolonged period of no rainfall)
- Locust plague (insects destroy crops)
- Desertification because of global warming
- Floods, tropical storms
Human:
- War
- Over cultivation
- Population growth
- Poor irrigation making soil bad
- Bad governments (lack of planning)
Problems:
- Hunger, malnutrition, famine, starvation
- Civil unrest: riots, fighting
- Reduced ability to work
- Migration (pushes the problem somewhere else)
Solutions:
- Aid: good during a crisis but bad long term- becomes dependent. Bad for local farmers
- Agricultural improvements: machines irrigation, fertilisers, better seeds, crop rotation
- Reduce population growth - reduce demand for food
case study
a farm or agricultural system
Intensive rice farming in Bangladesh
Key facts:
Intensive subsistence farming
Uses high levels of labour on small farms
Mainly to feed the family
Places:
Bangladesh
Ganges delta and floodplain
Towns: Tangrail, Rangpur
Inputs:
- Long growing season, 3 crops per year
- Temp over 21°C, high tropical monsoon climate over 2000mm rain
- Fertile delta and floodplain
- Dry time for harvesting
- Annual floods deposit rich layers of alluvium (silt)
- Large labour force
- Water buffaloes for ploughing (manure as well)
- Small fields die to high pop growth and splitting up between family members
- Rice seeds
Processes:
- Preparing (ploughing, building bunds- hold water in)
- Planting seedlings in beds close to village houses
- Transplanting seeds into wet paid field (must start underwater)
- Weeding to allow rice plants to grow
- Harvesting
- Threshing and winnowing (hitting rock grain with sticks which breaks the rice grain from the husk then throwing into air, husk blows away, rice falls
Output:
- Rice for subsistence, some sent to market to buy extra materials
- Husks - animal feed
- Manure from animals- fertiliser
- Rice seeds to replant next growing season
- Very little waste
case study
a country or region suffering from food shortages
Somalia
Key Facts:
- Conflict have left 1.1 million Somalis displaced
- Famine in South in 2011 killed 250,000
- 1 in 8 children under five is acutely malnourished.
- Close to one million people are in need of emergency food assistance.
- 2 year drought, now being the driest year in
the last 60 years, caused record food
inflation, expectation of the next harvest being 50% of normal.
Place Names:
Horn of Africa
Somalia
Capital Mogadishu (most of the fighting taken place)
Physical Causes
- Low levels of rainfall ( semi desert climate)
- A period of drought
- Increasing temperatures ( global warming)
- Plague of locusts
- Increasing desertification ( linked to human causes)
Drought leads to crop failure and food shortages
Human Causes:
- Population growth leading to lack of resources
- Over cultivation, over grazing and deforestation lead to desertification and less food production.
- Conflict and civil war make food production diff (diff to work on the fields, travel to market)
- Food Aid not coming in (aid agencies don’t want or not allowed because of the war)
- No real government control in the war, so problems not solved
