Food Security - Ecological Perspective - Lecture Slides, Slides of Ecology and Environment

Download Food Security - Ecological Perspective - Lecture Slides and more Slides Ecology and Environment in PDF only on Docsity!

WHAT IS Food Security AND WHY IS

IT DIFFICULT TO ATTAIN?

Many people suffer from chronic

health and malnutrition

• Food security means having daily access to enough nutritious food to live an active and healthy life.
• One of every six people in less-developed countries is not getting enough to eat, facing food insecurity— living with chronic hunger and poor nutrition, which threatens their ability to lead healthy and productive lives. - The root cause of food insecurity is poverty. - Other obstacles to food security are political upheaval, war, corruption, and bad weather, including prolonged drought, flooding, and heat waves.

Many people do not get enough

vitamins and minerals

• Chronic lack of iodine can cause stunted growth, mental retardation, and goiter.
• Almost one-third of the world’s people do not get enough iodine in their food and water.
• According to the FAO and the WHO, eliminating this serious health problem would cost the equivalent of only 2–3 cents per year for every person in the world.

Many people have health problems

from eating too much

• Overnutrition occurs when food energy intake exceeds energy use, causing excess body fat.
• Face similar health problems as those under: lower life expectancy, greater susceptibility to disease and illness, and lower productivity and life quality.
• Globally about 925 million people have health problems because they do not get enough to eat, and about 1.1 billion people face health problems from eating too much.
• About 68% of American adults are overweight and half of those people are obese.
• Obesity plays a role in four of the top ten causes of death in the United States—heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and some forms of cancer.

Food production has increased

dramatically

• Since 1960, there has been an increase in

global food production from all three of the

major food production systems because of

technological advances.

• Tractors, farm machinery and high-tech fishing equipment.
• Irrigation.
• Inorganic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, high-yield grain varieties, and industrialized production of livestock and fish.

Industrialized crop production relies on

high-input monocultures

• Agriculture used to grow crops can be divided roughly into two types: - Industrialized agriculture, or high-input agriculture, uses heavy equipment and large amounts of financial capital, fossil fuel, water, commercial inorganic fertilizers, and pesticides to produce single crops, or monocultures. - Major goal of industrialized agriculture is to increase yield, the amount of food produced per unit of land. - Used on about 25% of the world’s cropland, mostly in more- developed countries, and produces about 80% of the world’s food.

Traditional agriculture often relies on

low-input polycultures

• Traditional agriculture provides about 20% of the world’s food crops on about 75% of its cultivated land, mostly in less-developed countries.
• There are two main types of traditional agriculture.
  • Traditional subsistence agriculture supplements energy from the sun with the labor of humans and draft animals to produce enough crops for a farm family’s survival, with little left over to sell or store as a reserve for hard times.
  • In traditional intensive agriculture, farmers increase their inputs of human and draft-animal labor, animal manure for fertilizer, and water to obtain higher crop yields, some of which can be sold for income.

A closer look at industrialized crop

production

• Farmers can produce more food by increasing their land or their yields per acre.
• Since 1950, about 88% of the increase in global food production has come from using high-input industrialized agriculture to increase yields in a process called the green revolution.
• Three steps of the green revolution:
  • First, develop and plant monocultures of selectively bred or genetically engineered high-yield varieties of key crops such as rice, wheat, and corn.

A closer look at industrialized crop

production

• A second green revolution has been taking place since 1967. Fast-growing varieties of rice and wheat, specially bred for tropical and subtropical climates, have been introduced into middle-income, less- developed countries such as India, China, and Brazil. - Producing more food on less land has helped to protect some biodiversity by preserving large areas of forests, grasslands, wetlands, and easily eroded mountain terrain that might otherwise be used for farming.

A closer look at industrialized crop

production

• Largely because of the two green revolutions, world grain production tripled between 1961 and 2009.
• People directly consume about 48% of the world’s grain production. About 35% is used to feed livestock and indirectly consumed by people who eat meat and meat products. The remaining 17% (mostly corn) is used to make biofuels such as ethanol for cars and other vehicles.

Crossbreeding and genetic engineering produce

varieties of crops and livestock

• Modern scientists are creating a second gene revolution by using genetic engineering to develop genetically improved strains of crops and livestock. - Alters an organism’s genetic material through adding, deleting, or changing segments of its DNA to produce desirable traits or to eliminate undesirable ones (gene splicing); resulting organisms are called genetically modified organisms. - Developing a new crop variety through gene splicing is faster selective breeding, usually costs less, and allows for the insertion of genes from almost any other organism into crop cells.

Meat production has grown steadily

• Meat and animal products such as eggs and milk are good sources of high-quality protein and represent the world’s second major food-producing system.
• Between 1961 and 2010, world meat production—mostly beef, pork, and poultry—increased more than fourfold and average meat consumption per person more than doubled.
• Global meat production is likely to more than double again by 2050 as affluence rises and more middle-income people begin consuming more meat and animal products in rapidly developing countries such as China and India.

Fish and shellfish production have

increased dramatically

• Fish and shellfish are also produced through

aquaculture—the practice of raising marine and

freshwater fish in freshwater ponds and rice

paddies or in underwater cages in coastal waters

or in deeper ocean waters.

• Some fishery scientists warn that unless we

reduce overfishing and ocean pollution, and slow

projected climate change, most of the world’s

major commercial ocean fisheries could collapse

by 2050.

WHAT ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS ARISE

FROM INDUSTRIALIZED FOOD

PRODUCTION?

Section 10-