Chapter 9: Food and Hunger Flashcards
How many calories do humans need to consume a day?
2,200 calories
What three crops are humans most dependent on?
Wheat, Rice, and Corn
What else is corn considered besides a food?
A future energy source
What is Industrialized Agriculture?
Method of providing most of the worlds’s food. Uses heavy equipment with fossil fuels, irrigation water, fertilizers, ad pesticides to produce high-yielding monocultures.
What is Plantation Agriculture?
Used in developing countries to grow cash crops. Examples: coffee, sugar cane, bananas and cacao. May be on land that was tropical rainforest. Large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are used.
What is Traditional or Subsistence Agriculture?
Farming to provide for one’s family, maybe a little extra to sell for profit. Relies on the hard work of individual humans, animals, and minimal use of pesticides or chemicals
What is Slash and Burn Agriculture?
Cutting down and burning forests ot clear land for planted crops and livestock. Plantation and traditional farming often rely on this method
What was the Green Revolution?
Post World War 2
Development of high-yielding monocultures
Large inputs of inorganic fertilizer
Heavy use of pesticides
Intensive irrigation
Growing of multiple crops on the same piece of land in one year
What are GMO’s?
Genetically Modified Organisms; Genes are transplanted from unrelated organisms into crops
What are the pros and cons of using GMO’s?
Benefits: Resist frost, repel pests, fix nitrogen
Concerns: Unforeseen affects biodiversity, lead to pesticide resistance, lower nutritional value of food, create new food allergens
What is Soil Erosion?
After plowing/harvesting, loose soil is easlity blown away aby wind or washed away by rain. Excessive irritgation causes greateer runoff and deplests aquifers. Soild is considered renewable, howerver, it takes a great amoung of time
What are some Soil Conservation Strategies?
No-till agriculture (farming without plowing)
Terracing (helps to farm hilly land on slopes)
Contour Plowing (plow across, not up/down slope)
Windbreaks – shrubs, trees planted around fields
What is a pest?
Any living thing that competes with humans for food
What are the types of pesticides?
Herbicides: Control weeds
Fungicides: Control Fungus
Rodenticidess: Control rodents
Insecticides: Control Insects
What are Broad Spectrum Pesticides:
Kill many different species; an environmental problem because the “good” species are killed with the “bad”
Examples: Chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT, Dieldrin)
Organophosphates (Malathion, Parathion)
What are Narrow Spectrum Pesticides?
Only kill a target
What is a pesticide treadmill?
Following an application of pesticide, most target pest will die. The survivors already have some genetic resistance. The survivors reproduce and pass their resistance to their young. The farmer will have to apply greater concentrations to this generation for the same effect. This process continues until the pesticide is no longer effective.
The pesticide treadmill is an example of a positive feedback loop.
What are the costs and benefits of pesticide use?
Price of Food: Determined by economic forces, supply and demand
Farmer must consider: Is the cost of pesticide worth the possibility of additional yield
Farmer usually does not consider: Ecological effects of pesticide, pesticide runoff health risk of pesticide exposure, pesticide residue on food
What is the IPM?
Integrated Pest Management
What is the goal of IPM and what do they do?
Not to completely eradicate pests
IPM makes used of the natural enemies of the target pest, crop rotation, the use of pheromones (put sterile males into the population), and limited use of narrow spectrum pesticides and natural pesticides
Example: Ladybugs eat aphids
What is the circle of poison?
Many pesticides are banned in one country but not another
How many pounds of grain does it take to produce 1 pound of meat?
5-10 pounds
What is a Factory Farm?
A large-scale animal confinement operation. Hundreds, thousands, or millions of animals are housed together, fattened quickly with antibiotics and growth hormones (CAFO: Confined Animal Feeding Operation)
This increases air and water pollution and emergent pathogens
What does freshwater farming include?
Carp, tilapia, catfish, and trout
What does saltwater farming include?
Seaweed, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish
What is Aquaculture Farming?
Farming involving aquatic animals
What are some environmental concerns in aquaculture?
Nutrient pollution caused by excess waste
Excessive antibiotic use
Changes to genetic diversity (escaped farm
species reproduce with native species)
Degradation of aquatic ecosystems
What countries still practice whaling?
Iceland, Japan, Norway, and Russia
When did activism for whales happen?
During the 1970s
What was the campaign that helped the whales called?
Save The Whales
What kind of resource is soil?
A renewable resource but can take thousands of years to form. The parent rock material from which it forms varies greatly in the time that is needed to break it down
Why are their thousands of soil types around the world?
Differences are due to climate, geography,
parent material, age and presence of organisms
What does the particle size of a soil affect?
Texture and porosity
What are the three types of soil?
Clay, silt, and sand
What is the order of the three soils from largest to smallest?
Sand, silt, and clay
What is the soil profile?
O horizon – Surface soil, contains partially decomposed plant material and/or leaf litter.
A horizon – Topsoil, mineral-containing weathered rock material and organic matter (humus)
B horizon – Subsoil, less organic material and more mineral particles
C horizon – Weathered parent material on top of bedrock
In what order do you read a soil triangle?
Clay, silt, then sand.
What percent of the U.S population is overweight?
60%
What percent of the U.S population is seriously overweight or obese?
30%
