topic 8 case study - a past and present attempt at achieving food security at a national scale

what has been one past attempt at achieving food security on a national scale?

• attempt: the intensification of farming after WW2, from the 1940s to the 1980s which involved the use of monoculture.

• monoculture allowed UK farmers to fully concentrate on the production of one type of crop, to maximise its yield.

• monoculture was used for coffee and wheat plantations.

what made this past attempt effective?

• it helped to greatly increase domestic food production in the UK, as in the 1940s the UK imported 70% of its cereal crops, but by 1980 this had decreased to 20%.

• this meant that more food was available locally and less needed to be bought from abroad, increasing food security in the UK.

what made this past attempt ineffective?

• a drought in 1976 caused the production of monoculture cereal crops to drop by about 500,000 tones, leading to food insecurity.

• monoculture crops could be wiped out by a single pest or pathogen, which decreases crop yield and decreases food security.

• monoculture reduced the variety of crops, and also caused a decline in biodiversity.

• growing the same crop year after year meant that land was over-exploited, reducing the availability of certain nutrients in the soil.

  • this led to soil exhaustion and reduced the fertility of these soils, and the degradation of the soils also increased the risk of soil erosion.

what is one present attempt at achieving food security on a national scale?

• the use of hydrophonics is a technological strategy to sustainably increase food security, as it involves farming without the use of soil; instead, crops are grown in a well-balanced nutrient solution.

• the crops are monitored to ensure the correct balance of nutrients.

what makes this present attempt effective?

• Thanet Earth in Kent uses hydrophonics to produce 225 million tomatoes each year (12% of the UK's total production) and 13 million cucumbers each year (8% of the UK's total production).

• hydrophonics allows salad vegetables to be grown all year round in the UK, which increases food availability and makes us less reliant on food imports, thus increasing food security.

• it is sustainable, as hydrophonics schemes often recycle water and use natural predators to kill pests, reducing the need for chemical fertilisers that damage soil fertility.

• the use of nutrient solution instead of soil leads to less soil depletion and reduced soil-overexploitation, which in turn allows UK soil fertility to be conserved.

what makes this present attempt ineffective?

• hydrophonics schemes are only used for high value crops, so it may not increase the availability of all types of crop in the UK.

• hydrophonics schemes are very expensive to set up, so they are not economically sustainable.

• because of the high set-up costs, food produced using hydrophonics is expensive, making it unaffordable for some people, which means that hydrophonics do not fully ensure food security.