Food and Food Supply

1. Define food security and food insecurity.
Food security refers to the people in an area having access each day to sufficient food with sufficient nutrients. It depends on countries having the means to produce or import enough food for its population. Also, a country must make sure that there are no harmful environmental effects that can affect its ability to produce food. Food insecurity means not being able to have either enough food or food with enough nutrients each day.

2. Distinguish between undernutrition, malnutrition, and overnutrition.
Undernutrition occurs when the food an individual eats is not enough to meet its basic energy needs. Malnutrition occurs when the food an individual eats does not contain enough proteins or key nutrients. Overnutrition occurs when the food an individual eats contains more calories or more nutrients than those that are necessary.

3. Describe the effects of diet deficiencies in Vitamin A.
A lack of Vitamin A can cause increased susceptibility to common childhood infectious diseases. Children under 6 who do not get enough Vitamin A can go blind and even die.

4. What is famine? How may it affect: societies, the environment?
Famine is a severe shortage of food in a certain area. There is mass starvation, deaths, and social disruption. Societies become chaotic and many starving people migrate to other areas and there is a frantic search for food and water. Individuals also eat their reserves of grains for future years and they will kill their breeding livestock. This will have an impact on the sustainable yield of an environment, affecting its ability to provide enough food for the population in the future.

5. What three systems provide most of the world’s food?
Wheat rice and corn provide more than half of the calories consumed by the world population.

6. Distinguish among industrialized agriculture and plantation agriculture.
Industrialized agriculture or high-input agriculture is that that uses high amounts of energy such as fossil fuels, a large amount of water, uses commercial fertilizers, pesticides and produces single crops (monocultures) and raises livestock.
Plantation agriculture is a form of industrialized agriculture used in tropical developing countries. It involves growing cash crops on large monoculture plantations that will later be sold to developing countries. Forests are cleared to make room for these plantations and biodiversity is reduced.

7. What is a green revolution? What limits could these have?
The green revolution is a process that helped increase crop yields. It involved three steps: First, monocultures would consist of selectively bred or genetically engineered key crops. Second, use of large amounts of fertilizer, pesticides and water to improve yields. Third, multiple cropping would allow an increase in the amount of crops. The green revolution limits biodiversity and could have adverse effects on the soil profile of an area, thus affecting its ability to yield crops in the future.