Food security and farming

What are the 2 threats to global food security?

1. Global warming

2. The changing environment

What is global food security?

1. The ability of all people to access a continuous supply of safe, nutritious, affordable food.

2. The food accessed must be available and usable

What are the 7 factors that affect the food security of a country?

1. The changes to the conditions of the environment

2. Pests and pathogens affecting crops

3. The cost of agricultural equipment, livestolk, and seeds

4. Sustainability

5. War and conflict

6. Increasing birth rate

7. The diets of those living in the developed countries changing

What are examples of changing conditions of the environment?

1. Increase in temperature

2. Floods

3. Windy environment

What is the effect of increasing birth rates to food security?

As the population of a country grows faster, a larger amount of land needs to be dedicated to crop farming to feed the growing number of people.

What is the effect of an increase in temperature to food security

1. As the temperature of an environment increases, food insecurity becomes a major issue.

2. This is because plants cannot grow in an area that is too warm for them.

3. If the plants that provide food cannot grow, global food stolks will be affected significantly.

What is the effect of the increasing prices of agricultural products?

1. Agricultural equipment, such as pesticides, livestolk, seeds, and fertilisers, all cost money.

2. If the costs of these items become too high, farming crops become unsustainable.

3. This forces farmers to switch the farming of a crop, or to shut down operations permanently.

What is hydroponics?

Growing crops without soil

Explain how crops are grown through hydroponics

1. Crops are grown in factories, in the large gutters where nutrient solutions flow.

2. The crops are supported by rock wool

3. By eliminating the soil, the pests that could harm the crops, are eliminated.

What are the 3 advantages to hydroponic cultivation

1. The greenhouse protects the crops from the elements, reducing the number of diseases.

2. The nutrient balance of the solution flowing through the gutters can be carefully controlled and tailored to the crop being grown.

3. There is no pollution risk to the waterways because the nutrient solution is in the pipework, meaning that unused nutrients get recycled. The recycling of nutrients makes this cultivation cheaper.

What is the purpose of hydroponic cultivation?

The vegetables that we get from the supermarket is through hydroponic cultivation

What is a monoculture farm?

A farm that is just growing one crop

Explain the process of monoculture

1. Monoculture can be used to grow fruits, vegetables, barley, or wheat.

2. The farm will specialise in growing the single crop

3. This makes harvesting much easier, but can lead to the deficiencies in the nutrients of the soil.

4. Pests can also build up

What is crop rotation?

This is where a different crop is planted each year

What are the advantages to crop rotation?

1. This will allow the nutrients in the soil to be replenished.

2. This will discourage pests that would normally affect a monoculture

What is intensive farming?

1. This is the name given to the farming of crops in quick succession after the harvest.

2. This is also the term given in keeping livestolk together(also known as factory farming)

What is the objective of intensive farming?

The maxamise the yield

What are the 5 features of intensive farming?

1. Intensive farming feeds more of the world's population and generates more income for farmers.

2. Intensive farming uses fertilisers to increase the rate of growth of plants, and machines to harvest crops.

3. Through intensive farming, antibiotics are given to livestolk to reduce the spread of diseases.

4. Intensive farming uses modern methods of chemical pesticides and artificial fertilisers

5. Intensive farming can be a very efficient use of resources

What are the 5 ways of how efficiency is increased in intensive farming?

1. Controlling temperature to ensure that animals lose less energy through homeostasis( temperature regulation), and to ensure that plants ahve the optimum conditions for photosynthesis; the conserved energy is used for growth.

2. Feeding animals with a high protein diet to ensure that they grow faster.

3. Restricting the movement of animals; less energy wasted by running around ensures that more energy can be conserved for growth

4. Killing weeds reduced the competition for resources( sunlight, space, water, nutrients) for the crop plant

5. Fewer pests ensure less disease in livestolk and a fewer number of crop plants being affected

What is organic farming?

Organic farming is potentially the opposite of intensive farming

What are the features of organic farming?

1. Organic farming uses methods of biological pest control, natural pest control( such as pyrethrin), and natural fertilisers such as compost and bone meal( ground-up animals bones)

2. Organic farming is expensive and makes up nearly 1% of the world's farmland.

What are pests?

Pests are organisms that reduce the yield(final amount) of usable food.

What are the three types of pests?

1. Weeds

2. Insects

3. Diseases

What are the 2 main ways to control pests?

1. Biologically

2. Chemically

What is biological pest control? Provide an example

1. This is adding the natural predator of the pest to the environment to control the pest population

2. For instance, ladybirds can be introduced to an area infested with aphids; ladybirds are the natural predators of aphids and can, therefore, keep the population numbers of aphids low.

What are the advantages to biological pest control?

1. This method is a long-term solution

2. The pests cannot develop resistance towards the predator

What are the disadvantages to biological pest control?

1. This works best in closed areas, such as greenhouses

2. The predator will cause long-term environmental damage, especially if the predator is not endemic to the area.

What are the 4 types of chemical pest control?

1. Fungicides

2. Insecticides

3. Molluscicides

4. Herbicides

What organisms do fungicides kill?

Fungi

What organisms do insecticides kill?

Insects

What organisms do molluscicides kill?

Molluscs

What organisms do herbicides kill?

Weeds

What are the disadvantages to chemical pesticides?

They cause environmental damage

List 4 ways of how chemical pesticides can harm the environment

1. Chemical pesticides are slow to decompose

2. Chemical pesticides can cause bioaccumulation and build up in the tissues of organisms

3. Chemical pesticides kill harmless insects, such as bees

4. They can harm food chains by becoming more concentrated in top predators( this is biomagnification)

What has overfishing caused?

Overfishing has now depleted the number of fish in our oceans.

What has each fishing boat been given?

1. Each fishing boat has been given a quota of fish that they are allowed to capture anually

2. They need to ensure that fishing is done under this quota value

What are the disadvantages to wild fishing?

1. Wild fishing can lead to environmental impacts and damage to their habitats.

2. This can include the accidental catching of dolphins, turtles, and other fish species captured that year

What are the objectives of fish farms?

Fish farms provide a way to farm enough fish for human consumption, without depleting wild fish stocks further.

What are the 3 advantages to fish farming?

1. The food fed to the fish is of high quality, ensuring the fish in fish farms grow muscle mass more quickly

2. Acquiring farmed fish from fish farms ensures that the wild population of fish is given more time to recover

3. We know where the fish are exactly and if they are large enough for human consumption.

What are the 2 disadvantages to fish farming?

1. The proximity of fish to one another makes them more prone to disease

2. The excretement that falls to the ocean floor causes a change to pH, resulting in nothing growing there.