3.2 Food shortages + solutions

Question 1

What are physical causes for food shortages?

Answer 1

Natural causes for food shortages are:

• Tropical cyclones: when storms hit, their heigh winds and torrential rainfall can devastate farmland and crops.
• floods: many agricultural areas are on areas that are often flooded. Serious flooding can damage a whole crop.
• drought and unreliable rainfall: the failure of rainfall can ruin a whole crop.

Question 2

What are the human causes for food shortages?

Answer 2

Human causes for food shortages are:

• War: can lead to food shortages as some people are forced to leave their home and not grow crops.
• low capital investment: lack of capital in LIC’s means that technology and new schemes to increase crop yields are difficult to implement and develop.
• Rural poverty: in many LIC’s there is rural poverty. Farmers use inefficient techniques such as ploughing up and down slopes which decreases their yields.

Question 3

What are the effects of food shortages?

Answer 3

The effects of food shortages are:

• it can lead to protein and vitamin deficiency diseases such as:
• kwashiorkor (lack of protein), beriberi (lack of vitamin b1) and rickets (lack of vitamin D)
• Increased death rates
  ( especially infant mortality rates)
• fewer children are able to complete schooling
• Increased expenditure on health services.
• A weaker less productive workforce
• Increased dependence on International aid.
• Rural-Urban migration to escape rural poverty which may have a negative impact on the rural economy.

Question 4

What are the solutions to food shortages?

Answer 4

The solutions to food shortages are:

• food aid
• The green revolution
• Irrigation

Question 5

How does food aid address food shortages?

Answer 5

Food aid shortages as it provides food to those who are in need of it.

Question 6

How does the Green revolution address food shortages?

Answer 6

The Green revolution addresses food shortages as it increases yields as the modified crops require fewer growing seasons. This means that there can be more food.

Question 7

How does irrigation address food shortages?

Answer 7

irrigation addresses food shortages as it helps with the growing of crops by extending growth periods.

Question 8

What are the positives and negatives of food aid?

Answer 8

Positives:
- It provides food to those in need
Negatives:
- difficult to transport from HIC’s to LIC’s
-farmers receive less money as food aid is cheaper to buy

Question 9

What are the positives and negatives of a green revolution?

Answer 9

Positives:

• Increased employment on farms
• resistant to drought
• have a shorter growing season
• people’s diets improve

negatives:

• more inputs of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are needed
• HYV crops are lower in minerals

Question 10

What are the positives and negatives of irrigation?

Answer 10

positives:
- assists with the growing of crops when there is little water because of drought.

negatives:

• expensive
• overextraction of water can lead to the depletion of water aquifiers
• increases salt content in the soil which reduces productivity of the land when irrigation is not used properly.