Chapter 9: Food and Hunger

Question 1

How many calories do humans need to consume a day?

Answer 1

2,200 calories

Question 2

What three crops are humans most dependent on?

Answer 2

Wheat, Rice, and Corn

Question 3

What else is corn considered besides a food?

Answer 3

A future energy source

Question 4

What is Industrialized Agriculture?

Answer 4

Method of providing most of the worlds’s food. Uses heavy equipment with fossil fuels, irrigation water, fertilizers, ad pesticides to produce high-yielding monocultures.

Question 5

What is Plantation Agriculture?

Answer 5

Used in developing countries to grow cash crops. Examples: coffee, sugar cane, bananas and cacao. May be on land that was tropical rainforest. Large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are used.

Question 6

What is Traditional or Subsistence Agriculture?

Answer 6

Farming to provide for one’s family, maybe a little extra to sell for profit. Relies on the hard work of individual humans, animals, and minimal use of pesticides or chemicals

Question 7

What is Slash and Burn Agriculture?

Answer 7

Cutting down and burning forests ot clear land for planted crops and livestock. Plantation and traditional farming often rely on this method

Question 8

What was the Green Revolution?

Answer 8

Post World War 2
Development of high-yielding monocultures
Large inputs of inorganic fertilizer
Heavy use of pesticides
Intensive irrigation
Growing of multiple crops on the same piece of land in one year

Question 9

What are GMO’s?

Answer 9

Genetically Modified Organisms; Genes are transplanted from unrelated organisms into crops

Question 10

What are the pros and cons of using GMO’s?

Answer 10

Benefits: Resist frost, repel pests, fix nitrogen
Concerns: Unforeseen affects biodiversity, lead to pesticide resistance, lower nutritional value of food, create new food allergens

Question 11

What is Soil Erosion?

Answer 11

After plowing/harvesting, loose soil is easlity blown away aby wind or washed away by rain. Excessive irritgation causes greateer runoff and deplests aquifers. Soild is considered renewable, howerver, it takes a great amoung of time

Question 12

What are some Soil Conservation Strategies?

Answer 12

No-till agriculture (farming without plowing)
Terracing (helps to farm hilly land on slopes)
Contour Plowing (plow across, not up/down slope)
Windbreaks – shrubs, trees planted around fields

Question 13

What is a pest?

Answer 13

Any living thing that competes with humans for food

Question 14

What are the types of pesticides?

Answer 14

Herbicides: Control weeds
Fungicides: Control Fungus
Rodenticidess: Control rodents
Insecticides: Control Insects

Question 15

What are Broad Spectrum Pesticides:

Answer 15

Kill many different species; an environmental problem because the “good” species are killed with the “bad”
Examples: Chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT, Dieldrin)
Organophosphates (Malathion, Parathion)

Question 16

What are Narrow Spectrum Pesticides?

Answer 16

Only kill a target

Question 17

What is a pesticide treadmill?

Answer 17

Following an application of pesticide, most target pest will die. The survivors already have some genetic resistance. The survivors reproduce and pass their resistance to their young. The farmer will have to apply greater concentrations to this generation for the same effect. This process continues until the pesticide is no longer effective.
The pesticide treadmill is an example of a positive feedback loop.

Question 18

What are the costs and benefits of pesticide use?

Answer 18

Price of Food: Determined by economic forces, supply and demand
Farmer must consider: Is the cost of pesticide worth the possibility of additional yield
Farmer usually does not consider: Ecological effects of pesticide, pesticide runoff health risk of pesticide exposure, pesticide residue on food

Question 19

What is the IPM?

Answer 19

Integrated Pest Management

Question 20

What is the goal of IPM and what do they do?

Answer 20

Not to completely eradicate pests
IPM makes used of the natural enemies of the target pest, crop rotation, the use of pheromones (put sterile males into the population), and limited use of narrow spectrum pesticides and natural pesticides
Example: Ladybugs eat aphids

Question 21

What is the circle of poison?

Answer 21

Many pesticides are banned in one country but not another

Question 22

How many pounds of grain does it take to produce 1 pound of meat?

Answer 22

5-10 pounds

Question 23

What is a Factory Farm?

Answer 23

A large-scale animal confinement operation. Hundreds, thousands, or millions of animals are housed together, fattened quickly with antibiotics and growth hormones (CAFO: Confined Animal Feeding Operation)
This increases air and water pollution and emergent pathogens

Question 24

What does freshwater farming include?

Answer 24

Carp, tilapia, catfish, and trout

Question 25

What does saltwater farming include?

Answer 25

Seaweed, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish

Question 26

What is Aquaculture Farming?

Answer 26

Farming involving aquatic animals

Question 27

What are some environmental concerns in aquaculture?

Answer 27

Nutrient pollution caused by excess waste
Excessive antibiotic use
Changes to genetic diversity (escaped farm
species reproduce with native species)
Degradation of aquatic ecosystems

Question 28

What countries still practice whaling?

Answer 28

Iceland, Japan, Norway, and Russia

Question 29

When did activism for whales happen?

Answer 29

During the 1970s

Question 30

What was the campaign that helped the whales called?

Answer 30

Save The Whales

Question 31

What kind of resource is soil?

Answer 31

A renewable resource but can take thousands of years to form. The parent rock material from which it forms varies greatly in the time that is needed to break it down

Question 32

Why are their thousands of soil types around the world?

Answer 32

Differences are due to climate, geography,

parent material, age and presence of organisms

Question 33

What does the particle size of a soil affect?

Answer 33

Texture and porosity

Question 34

What are the three types of soil?

Answer 34

Clay, silt, and sand

Question 35

What is the order of the three soils from largest to smallest?

Answer 35

Sand, silt, and clay

Question 36

What is the soil profile?

Answer 36

O horizon – Surface soil, contains partially decomposed plant material and/or leaf litter.

A horizon – Topsoil, mineral-containing weathered rock material and organic matter (humus)

B horizon – Subsoil, less organic material and more mineral particles

C horizon – Weathered parent material on top of bedrock

Question 37

In what order do you read a soil triangle?

Answer 37

Clay, silt, then sand.

Question 38

What percent of the U.S population is overweight?

Answer 38

60%

Question 39

What percent of the U.S population is seriously overweight or obese?

Answer 39

30%