4.3: Population-resource relationship

Question 1

Explain the concept of food security

Answer 1

• When all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe nutritious food
• To maintain a healthy and active life

Question 2

Explain the link between wealthy countries importing food and food shortages

Answer 2

• There is a huge geographical imbalance between food production and food consumption
• This results in a lack of food security in many countries
• Wealthy countries import food from elsewhere if they can’t produce enough or there is demand for foods ‘out of season’, so poor countries may be exporting food while experiencing local shortages

Question 3

Explain what affects food production

Answer 3

• Physical factors such as climate, water availability and soil type and
• Human factors such as population size, farming skills and financial investment into farming.

Question 4

The countries that face food insecurity may also suffer certain economic problems:

Answer 4

• High levels of poverty (can’t afford the food that is available/ create the demand for imports)
• Large fluctuations in food prices
• Lack of financial investment in technology to raise yields
• Poor infrastructure/ transport difficulties (between 33-50% of all food produced globally is never eaten; in HICs this is mainly because of over-fussy consumers but in LICs it is mainly because of spoilage where proper
  handling, processing, packaging and distribution methods are lacking)

Question 5

The countries that face food insecurity may also suffer certain social problems:

Answer 5

• Rapid population growth (having kids to help farm and provide security in old age)
• Poor infrastructure/ transport difficulties (between 33-50% of all food produced globally is never eaten; in HICs this is mainly because of over-fussy consumers but in LICs it is mainly because of spoilage where proper handling, processing, packaging and distribution methods are lacking)

Question 6

The countries that face food insecurity may also suffer certain political problems:

Answer 6

• Social unrest or war
• Political mismanagement
• Lack of financial investment in technology to raise yields

Question 7

The countries that face food insecurity may also suffer certain environmental problems:

Answer 7

• Frequent extremes of climate - droughts or floods
• High levels of pests and diseases
• Deforestation and soil erosion

Question 8

World statistics on malnourishment

Answer 8

• Around 800 million are undernourished, mainly in LICs
• Another billion are malnourished – eat a poorly balanced diet lacking elements such as protein, minerals or vitamins 2 billion are overweight (over-nourishment is a form of malnourishment!)

Question 9

Explain how malnourishment may impact the economy

Answer 9

• Nearly 4 billion people are likely to suffer health effects due to a lack of or too much food!
• This impacts the economy – reduces productivity and increases healthcare costs.

Question 10

Explain how current food production is unsustainable

Answer 10

• Reliant on fossil fuels, particularly oil (e.g. for farm machines, to transport goods and livestock, for fertiliser, other chemicals and pumping water)
• Over-use of fresh water in some parts of the world (e.g. aquifer depletion)
• Soil erosion (the loss of fertile topsoil)
• Competition for land (barley, maize and sugar can be used for biofuels as a substitute for oil-based fuels)
• Note – we also lose (to spoilage) or waste about half the food we produce!

Question 11

Explain how demand can cause food shortages

Answer 11

• Demand may rise with population growth
• e.g. many parts of sub-Saharan Africa today and projected into future
• India in 1960s before Green Revolution took off)
• Or migration (e.g. refugees leaving Syria for Turkey, increasing demand for food in host country)
• Rise in incomes (e.g. China – and wealthy demand for meat & dairy so less grain available globally because used in animal feed which puts prices up)

Question 12

Explain how supply can cause food shortages (environmental)

Answer 12

• Climatic extremes (drought, tropical storms, flooding) - the Sahel is a band of semi-arid land stretching across Africa south of the Sahara. Its countries constitute a list of the worst famines in recent decades: Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia
• Pests or disease (1840s Irish potato blight & famine (over-reliance of the poor on one crop, affected by blight, but beef still exported from Ireland to UK at that time) + locusts
• Soil erosion (Easter Island collapse)

Question 13

Explain how supply can cause food shortages (political)

Answer 13

• Lack of financial investment in latest farming techniques
• War can reduce supply for many reasons – disrupts farming, less productive, resources may be destroyed, labour diverted to military (e.g. South Sudan, Ethiopia 1984, Yemen being blockaded)
• Political mismanagement - worst famines in history have been in China – ‘Great Chinese famine’ (1959-61, 15-45m died) associated with ironically named ‘Great Leap Forward’ – farming was organised into communes by Mao, top-down orders given such as ‘close plant’, deep plough’ and 4 pests campaign where they were ordered to kill wild birds which led to insect plagues, unrealistic quotas set so grain sent to cities and even exported to raise money for industrialisation while farmers starved - there were also droughts and floods, which the government blamed for the famine.

Question 14

Explain how supply can cause food shortages (economic)

Answer 14

• Lack of financial investment in latest farming techniques

Question 15

Explain how supply can cause food shortages (social)

Answer 15

• Lack of transport (poor roads)

Question 16

Explain how ‘overpopulation’ is not actually to blame for the problem of malnourishment

Answer 16

• As population numbers have increased, the numbers dying in famines have actually fallen over the years, particularly since the 1960s
• This challenges our preconceptions about ‘overpopulation’ being to blame, which is really just a way of blaming people for being poor and unable to afford the food that is available.

Question 17

Explain the physical consequences of food shortages

Answer 17

• Less resistant to disease generally
• Plus specific deficiency diseases – e.g. beri beri (lack Vitamin B1), anaemia (lack iron), rickets (lack vitamin D), kwashiorkor (lack protein) – stunting is prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
• Ironically, high IMRs may lead to higher TFRs, increasing population further

Question 18

Explain the social/economic consequences of food shortages

Answer 18

• Nalnourished never fulfil physical or intellectual potential
• Reduces people’s capacity to work = cycle of ill health, low productivity and underdevelopment.
• Some LICs (e.g. Ethiopia) export cash crops grown on their best land, even as their people starve
• HICs may dump food surpluses as ‘aid’ which undermines future farming in LICs – less profit = less incentive to invest.

Question 19

Explain the knock on effects of food shortages (rural-urban migration)

Answer 19

• Rural food shortages encourage rural-urban migration (e.g. from rural areas of India to Mumbai and other major cities) which may make shortages worse if rural labour supply falls but not replaced by mechanisation

Question 20

Explain the political consequences of food shortages

Answer 20

• Shortages and high food prices may result in unrest & riots
• Or it could result in high prices, so print money = inflation (Venezeuala)

Question 21

Explain the positive consequences of food shortages

Answer 21

• Food shortages could stimulate agricultural reform – see Boserup, Borlaug
• Dwarf wheat boosted yields in Mexico, then India
• Attempts to maximise food production all over the world
• Vertical farming in cities.

Question 22

Explain the signficance of fertilisers in today’s world

Answer 22

• Today, more than 500 million tons of artificial fertilizer is produced per year
• This process uses 1% global energy and sustains almost half the world’s population today!!
• In total, 30% of global energy is currently used in industrial scale food production.

Question 23

Explain the relation between population after 1950 and food production

Answer 23

• Dramatic growth beginning in 1950 (above 1.8% per year) coincided with greatly increased food production as a result of the post 1945 Second Agricultural Revolution in HICs (industrialisation of farming) and the Green Revolution in LICs from the mid-1960s transformed agricultural practices and raised crop yields dramatically

Question 24

What were the two major categories of Green Revolution technologies

Answer 24

• The breeding of new plant varieties (High Yielding Varieties or HYVs);
• The development of new agricultural techniques (irrigation, mechanisation, chemical fertilisers, pesticides).

Question 25

Explain how Norman Borlaug enhanced wheat growth

Answer 25

• Norman Borlaug produced wheat plants which had large seed heads and hence a good yield
• However, the plants were too tall and were prone to falling over (lodging)
• A mutant dwarf form of wheat was discovered in post-war Japan
• Borlaug crossed this short strain with the high yield tall variety and produced a short, high yielding wheat
• Mexico went from importing half its wheat to self-sufficiency by 1956 and, by 1964, to exporting half a million tons of wheat
• From there, the technologies were exported to the rest of Central America and Asia (mainly between 1968- 1983).

Question 26

India was one of the first countries to benefit from High Yielding Varieties (HYVs). What were the pros?

Answer 26

• It enabled them to double or quadruple the yields of traditional varieties
• Most are drought resistant (except rice)
• They need shorter growing season so can double crop in some areas
• They were very responsive to fertilisers and irrigation.

Question 27

India was one of the first countries to benefit from High Yielding Varieties (HYVs). What were the cons?

Answer 27

• HYVs require more weed control and are often more susceptible to pests and disease
• High inputs of fertiliser and pesticides are economically and environmentally costly leading to high levels of rural debt and pollution
• Mechanisation increased unemployment
• This widened income gap and increased rural-urban migration
• Salinization of soil with over-irrigation
• Cereal HYVs displaced local fruits, vegetables and legumes so poorer diets lacking zinc, iron and Vitamin A.

Question 28

Explain the recent innovations: GE, precision agriculture

Answer 28

• Genetic engineering (since the 1990s); it is controversial but use is spreading. Attempts to tailor GM crops to suit certain soils and climates – e.g. herbicide and drought resistance.
• Precision agriculture – e.g. hyperspectral cameras used to target inputs of water and fertiliser to reduce waste and pollution.

Question 29

Explain the recent innovations: perennial crops, vertical farming, low tech improvements

Answer 29

• Development of perennial crops that don’t need replanting – would protect the soil from erosion (annual crops are completely cleared, leaving soil vulnerable to erosion)
• Vertical farming doesn’t require soil or sunlight, but LED lighting and fertilizer enriched water. It is designed for warehouses in cities, which reduces food miles, and shouldn’t require herbicides or pesticides. Fish can also be raised indoors in big ponds
• Low tech improvements such as farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) including tree planting and zai holes can also play an important role.

Question 30

What are the role of constraints in relation to a changing population: physical factors

Answer 30

• Frequent droughts may reduce agricultural potential (e.g. Sahel in Africa). Nearly 3 billion people currently live in areas of water stress. In Africa 25% of the population already lives with chronic water stress. Farming already accounts for 70% of the world’s freshwater use
• Pests and diseases – pests are becoming resistant to insecticides.
• Hazards such as tropical storms impede development in many LICs (e.g. Bangladesh, Caribbean, Haiti), a high risk of flooding may deter investment. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes may devastate an area - expensive to mitigate consequences
• Climate change may increase frequency of extreme events, expand deserts, increase droughts and activity of
  insects.

Question 31

What are the role of constraints in relation to a changing population: human factors

Answer 31

• Lack of investment in improving agricultural practices e.g. producing High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of crops, investing in machinery, fertilisers, irrigation. Much of Africa is yet to have a ‘Green Revolution’, in marked contrast with Asia. Weak financial sectors mean many small farmers cannot get credit to finance even small improvements in production techniques; corrupt governments may have other ‘priorities’.
• Poor transport and storage - as much as half the food grown in LICs rots or deteriorates in quality because proper handling, processing (lack of electricity in rural areas), packaging and distribution methods are lacking.
• War - disrupts farming - population are less productive, resources may be destroyed, and labour & funds diverted to military. Examples include: Ethiopian famine of 1984 was caused by war and drought; 1983-2005 civil war over oil in Sudan resulted in food shortages for decades; current blockade & famine in Yemen. Conversely, where development succeeds, countries tend to become safer from violent conflict
• Trade barriers - LICs complain that tariffs, quotas and regulations set by HICs reduce their ability to export and hinders their development.

Question 32

What is the concept of carrying capacity

Answer 32

• The maximum number of people that can be supported by the resources and technology of a given area

Question 33

Why is carrying capacity difficult to determine

Answer 33

• The carrying capacity of an area is not fixed
• It may vary with such factors as climatic variability (e.g. more rainfall some years than others) and land use, and people’s consumption levels
• Also, what are considered resources may change, and so does technology. Even the ‘given area’ is debatable since humans can import and export resources such as water, food and energy.

Question 34

Explain how population growth depends on technological advances

Answer 34

• In the past, periods of rapid population growth have paralleled eras of technological advance, which have increased the carrying capacity for humans
• This is a dynamic concept where population growth responds to technological advances. E.g. half the people alive today depend on disruption of the nitrogen cycle and fossil fuels to produce fertilisers through the Haber- Bosch process.

Question 35

Explain how as we push the planet to the extremes we damage it

Answer 35

• Humanity is currently using the resources of 1.6 planets to provide the goods and services we demand each year
• “The more we continue to exceed Earth’s limits, the more damage we do to our own future.
• Biodiversity forms the foundation of healthy forests, rivers and oceans
• Take away species, and these ecosystems will collapse along with the clean air, water, food and climate services that they provide us.”

Question 36

Explain how expanding the carrying capacity can have a signifcant impact on life

Answer 36

• Global populations of fish, birds, mammals and amphibians have already declined by 68% between 1970 and 2016.
• So, we may be expanding carrying capacity in that the maximum number of people that can be supported seems to increase every year, but at great cost and possibly only in the short term.

Question 37

What is optimum population

Answer 37

• The theoretical number of people which, given available resources and technology, is
  sustainable and produces the highest standard of living and quality of life.

Question 38

What is over population

Answer 38

• A situation where the population of an area exceeds its’ carrying capacity
• The symptoms are low (even declining) per capita income and standards of living, unemployment and outward migration.

Question 39

What is under-population

Answer 39

• A situation where the resources and development of an area could support a larger population without any lowering of the standard of living, or where a population is too small to develop an area’s resources efficiently.

Question 40

Explain how the concept of over-population, optimum population and under-population are subjective

Answer 40

• These are subjective ideas which can’t be objectively measured
• Is London optimum, over or under populated for example? What is the evidence for each? If more people want to migrate to London and there are still jobs available, does that suggest it is underpopulated?
• If it is overcrowded and imports a huge amount of food, energy and water from elsewhere, is it overpopulated, or does the infrastructure just need more investment?
• Very few people are entirely reliant on the carrying capacity of the region where they live. What value is this idea in an era of global trade and industry? We import surplus resources from other regions, using cash generated by intangible service activities, and mine fossil water and energy resources that were laid down in the past.

Question 41

Explain how the idea of living sustainably is difficult to measure or identify

See NOTES PAGE

Answer 41

• What actually is sustainable?

Question 42

Explain how disparities in wealth lead to inability to know if overpopulation truely causes proble

See NOTES PAGE

Answer 42

• From 1990 until 2015, the wealthiest 10%, around 630 million people, were responsible for 52% of CO2 emissions, while the poorest 50% produced only 7% of emissions.

Question 43

Disparities in food, energy and income of the world - is overpopulation an issue?

Answer 43

• Food: Providing the additional calories needed by the 13% of the world’s population facing hunger would require just 3% of the current global food supply.
• Energy: Bringing electricity to the 19% of the world’s population who currently lack it could be achieved with less than a 1% increase in global CO2 emissions.
• Income: Ending income poverty for the 21% of the global population who live on less than $1.25 a day would require just 0.2% of global income.

Question 44

Explain how the consumption of the wealthiest 10% of the world shows that overpopulation is not an issue

Answer 44

• The biggest source of planetary-boundary stress today is excessive resource consumption by roughly the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population, and the production patterns of the companies producing the goods and services that they buy:
• Carbon: Over 50% of global carbon emissions are generated by just 10% of people;
• Income: 57% of global income is in the hands of just 10% of people;
• Nitrogen: 33% of the world’s sustainable nitrogen budget is used to produce meat for people in the EU – just 7% of the world’s population.