4.3 population-resource-relationships

Question 1

natural causes of food insecurty

Answer 1

• temperatures: extremes kill crops and animals
• droughts: shortage of rainfall: irrigation: less yield
• flooding: wash away topsoil and reduce soil fertility
• natural disaster: damage large areas of agricultural land
• soil fertility: no minerals/flora/fauna, hard to cultivate
• pests: locusts, swarms , birds eat crops: reduce yields

Question 2

human causes of food insecurity

Answer 2

• overpopulation: increasing demand not met by supply
• overgrazing: veg eaten, reduced soil integrity, topsoil erosion, soil degradation
• over-cultivation: degradation as all nutrients used up w/o time to recover: lower yields
• deforestation: integrity and nutrient content damaged
• pollution: farming and industrial pollution degrade land
• conflict: men removed from farming duties, decreased yield,land too dangerous and degraded by chemical, environmental, biological warfare/scorched earth
• corruption: gov officials/armies use crops for themselves
• low capital investment: not investing enough money into the infrastructure needed to sustain agriculture (roads, storage facilities, machinery, seeds): agriculture won’t develop in line with growing population

Question 3

the green revolution

Answer 3

• primarily invented by MICs/LICs to deal with shortage
• positives: up to 4x higher yields, shorter growing seasons: variety of crops, more income to further improvements, employment, growing markets, positive effect on local area and infrastructure
• negatives: costly and damaging, HYC more susceptible to pests and disease, schemes more beneficial for middle/high income farmers, mechanisation: unemployment, poorer taste, ease of growth: less variety in diet

Question 4

agricultural technologies

Answer 4

• high yield seeds
• genetic engineering
• precision agriculture
• tech advancements (drones)
• environmental modelling
• advancement in traditional techniques
• rehabilitation of land
• pest management

Question 5

perennial crops

Answer 5

• naturally/artificially cross-breed plants that resemble crops used in MICs/LICs: slow progress
• increased output and decreased soil erosion: positive effect on river fooding, lead to eutrophication due to increased fertilisers and pesticides run offs

Question 6

carrying capacity

Answer 6

number of people/animals/crops a region is able to support w/o environmental degradation
- biocapacity: ecosystem’s capacity to produce biological materials used by ppl and to absorb the waste material generated by humans under current management schemes
- ecological footprint: sum of all corpland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre, timber it consumes, to absorb the wasted emitted when it uses energy and to provide space for its infrastructure

Question 7

optimum population

Answer 7

maximum amount of people that can be supported by available resources and technology
- economic optimum: perfect amount of people to exploit the resources and to reach the max possible standard of living
- optimum rhythm of growth: whereby pop growth responds to substantial technology advances
- population pressure: pop/unit area exceeds the carrying capacity
- population policy: measures taken by a government- explicitly / implicitly to influence aspects of demography
- Thomas Malthus: principle of population, 1798: tendency of mankind to increase beyond an adequate supply of food in a limited territory
- Boserup: improvements in technology will always conquer demand for food