Future of Food theory Flashcards
What is food insecurity?
When an an individual, community or population has a lack of access to safe, nutritious and healthy food
What are the four pillars of food security?
Access
Availability
Utilisation
Stability
What is access in terms of food security?
economic ability to access food
What is the availability pillar?
The physical ability to supply food
What is the utilisation of food?
the proper use of food and ability of an individual to digest this food
- for example if milk is a key staple and someone is lactose intolerant this may cause them to become food insecure
- or gluten in wheat based products which are key staple foods in many countries
What is the stability food pillar?
the sustainability of the 3 other pillars
What is undernourishment?
Not consuming enough calories to maintain a normal, active and healthy life
What is overnourishment?
Caused by an excessive intake of nutrients and calories leading to an accumulation of fat that impairs health
What is malnourishment?
When your body is not getting the correct amount of nutrition and calories - can be excess or a lack of
- Acts as an umbrella term for both over and undernourishment
What are current trends of global food insecurity?
There are currently around 850 million people severely food insecure globally and 2.4 billion people experiencing food insecurity according to the UN
World bank predicts that there will be 956 million people severely food insecure by 2025
- Due to increasing inflation and increases of food prices - reducing access to food
Not going to reach the zero hunger goal by 2030 and it is predicted there is still going to be 600 million people food insecure by 2030
What is the global food security index?
Annual set of measurements of food security based on multiple factors across a set of 113 countries
- Access, Availability, utilisation, safety, quality and stability
Who are the current top 3 and bottom 3 on the global food security index and their scores?
top 3:
Finland - 83.7
Ireland - 81.7
Norway - 80.5
Bottom 3:
Syria - 36.3
Haiti - 38.5
Yemen - 40.1
What may cause countries to be more food insecure then others?
Geography and climate - Access to fertile land - availability
Conflict
Economic development - better technology and infrastructure
Politics - how the government controls the distribution of food
International relations/trade policies - trading blocs, free trade agreements, WTO
Population growth
How might food security vary within countries?
Variance in climate across the country - affects the productivity of crops
Uneven distribution of resources and food - social inequality
Proportion of rural to urban communities - rural communities often have a lack of infrastructure making it harder to ransport food to them - rely on subsistence farming
What are the physical conditions required to grow food?
- Climate: different crops grow in different required climate conditions including: Temperature, rainfall, humidity and total sunlight
- Soil: Fertility of soil must be high to enable crop growth - must be rich in nutrients, water and stability of the ground
- Water availibility: to much water will damage the crops whereas to little will inhibit growth
- Air: clean air and air with appropriate levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen will affect rates of respiration and photosynthesis
What is the Malthusian view?
The idea that our population is growing exponentially whilst our ability to grow food is growing in a linear fashion.
Meaning our population will outgrow our ability to grow food, when this occurs we will reach a crisis point.
Causing famine, conflict, disease etc.
Boserupian view
The idea that we will continue to make ways to produce food faster then the growth of the population
Why is feeding the world a complex system?
The food system consists of supply chains at majoratively a global scale but also at a local scale.
Processes involved in the supply chain:
growing, processing, transporting and disposal
Explain why the food system being a supply chain makes it so complex
Growing - typically occurs in LIDCs which relates to problem with unfair trade and also requires the farmers to have as much productivity as possible
Processing - occurs after harvest to make the crops into edible products
Transport - requires complex transport systems (including pinchpoints) with high food miles and preservation of food to get them from ACs to LIDCs - much of this food is produced in LIDCs but very little goes to them -
Disposal - high rates of waste in ACs - 9.8 million tonnes a year in the UK
What are pinchpoints?
Maritime (water) hotspots where there is large amounts of maritime traffic a day due to transport of goods
- The transport of food is usually required to travel through these hotspots
They are also known as chokepoints as they leave the supply chain vulnerable as if there is a disruption it can massively impact food security
What pinchpoints are impacting food security?
Suez canal - Houthi (rebel group) in response to the gaza conflict have launched attacks on israel and impacted the flow of goods through the canal
Panama canal - faces severe droughts due to the El nino (weather phenomenon)
Factors impacting our ability to feed the world
Population growth and resources - malthus and boserup
Climate change - becoming harder and harder to produce crops
Environmental sustainability - agriculture has a significant environmental impact so limits on their impact have reduced production of crops
Food distribution and access - uneven distribution of crops - much wasted in ACs which could have been used in LIDCs and EDCs - 2.5 billion tonnes of food wasted a year
What is intensive compared to extensive farming
Intensive agriculture is often at a larger scale with higher inputs, outputs and levels of technology compared to extensive
Who uses intensive farming and who uses extensive?
Intensive will be used by large compannies and tncs
Extensive - small scale local farmers
