4. Food Security Flashcards
What is the definition of Food Security?
Food Security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
How does soil exhaustion cause food shortages?
[HUMAN CAUSE]
Soil exhaustion is caused by monoculture farming - constantly cropping a single crop removes the same nutrients from the soil, which becomes exhausted and erodes.
How does low capital investment cause food shortage?
[HUMAN CAUSE]
Low capital investment is a vicious circle in which poor people have little money to improve their farms, therefore farms are inefficient and have little surplus to sell, reducing capital earned (so less is invested….).
How does war cause food shortages?
[HUMAN CAUSE]
Some areas e.g. DRC face constant civil war. This causes people to leave their land, becoming refugees. They stop producing food and rely on aid.
Moving around also means they cannot take any owned crops to market (and is extremely dangerous for refugees).
How do tropical cyclones cause food shortages?
[PHYSICAL CAUSE]
In areas prone to tropical cyclones e.g. Bangladesh the storm can create tidal surges leading to severe flooding by sea, destroying crops, flooding farmland and pasture and making soil infertile through salinisation.
How do floods cause food shortages?
[PHYSICAL CAUSE]
Although some crops such as rice need flood water, severe flooding destroys most crops.
How does drought cause food shortages?
[PHYSICAL CAUSE]
If the rainfall is insufficient (and no irrigation is used) crops will not recieve enough water to survive and so harvests fail.
How do pests cause food shortages?
[PHYSICAL CAUSE]
Farmers need to be vigilant to protect their crops. A swarm of locusts can destroy 200,000 tonnes of crops a day. Some swarms contain up to 90 billion insects!
How does disease cause food shortages?
[HUMAN AND PHYSICAL CAUSE]
- Fungal diseases can destroy stored cereal crops and animals can catch diseases such as foot and mouth, reducing outputs.
- Farmers themselves can also contract diseases such as HIV or malaria, reducing their ability to work.
How is undernourishment a consequence of food shortages?
[HUMAN CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE]
Undernourishment affects children and adults, leaving them unfit for work. This causes productivity levels to fall leading to further undernourishment.
How is famine a consequence of food shortages?
[HUMAN CONSEQUENCE]
Large-scale undernourishment leading to significant suffering and death e.g South Sudan.
How is aid dependency a consequence of food shortages?
[HUMAN CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE]
During a famine aid agencies provide free food, this means farmers in parts of the country unaffected by famine cannot sell their food. This may ruin the agricultural economy leading to long term dependency on aid.
How is a continued state of undernourishment for those in poverty a consequence of food shortages?
[HUMAN CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE]
Poor people are often undernourished which means they can’t work as hard, which means they can’t fulfil the potential of their land which means less food is grown so they stay undernourished.
What are the physical causes for famine in South Sudan?
- Long-term decline in rainfall
- Increased soil degradation
- High population growth
- HIV prevalent
What are the human causes for famine in South Sudan?
- High dependency on farming but also ↓
- High dependency on food imports
- High military spending
- High debt
