Food and Agriculture Flashcards
(27 cards)
What are Agriculture’s challenges?
- feed everyone (produce enough food, distribute food equitably)
- maintain ecosystems
- provide livelihoods
- support culture and identity
What are the two major forms of food production?
- intensive agriculture
(large-scale production, high inputs, low human labour) - alternative agriculture
(smaller-scale prod, low inputs, high human labour)
What do we mean by agricultural inputs?
- synthetic fertilizers, pesticides
- machinery
- modified (“improved”) seeds
What do we mean by agricultural labour?
- clearing land, tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting
- may be performed by humans, animals and/or machinery
What are the features of intensive agriculture?
- monoculture (one crop at a time)
- highly mechanized
- high use of fertilizers, pesticides, modified seeds
- heavily reliant on fossil fuels
What are the drivers of intensive agriculture?
- economies of scale
- consolidation of agri-business
- north america, europe: policy incenties
- global South: export based economies
What are the intensive strategies to increase yields in agriculture?
- synthetic fertilizer
- mechanization
- irrigation
- specialization
- pesticides
- hybrid plant varieties
What is synthetic fertilizer?
- provides nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium
- made from ammonium nitrate (NH3)
- producing fertilizer is energy intensive
why is producing fertilizer energy intensive?
natural gas (methane) used as both an ingredient and a fuel
What is the “Green Revolution”?
- effort to increase agricultural yields in Asia, Latin America starting in 1960s
- technologies imported from US
- Yields were seen as a measure of progress
What were the green revolution methods?
- synthetic fertilizer
- mechanization
- irrigation
- monoculture
- pesticides
- transgenic seeds
What is the challenge of food distribution?
- 733M ppl facing hunger
- 3 billion+ cannot afford healthy diet
- amt of food wasted could feed 2 billion ppl per year
- obesity continues to increase
What are they key factors on unequal distribution?
- Threats to food security
(availability and affordability of food) - changing diets
(higher demand for animal products, processed or imported foods as incomes rise)
What are the environmental impacts of intensive agriculture?
maintaining ecosystems:
- habitat and biodiversity loss (deforestation)
- water pollution (runoff)
(nitrogen contamination; algae blooms) - impacts on wildlife (pesticides)
- pollinating insects declining
- soil degradation
(erosion, nutrient depletion) - water use (irrigation)
- fossil fuel use and carbon emissions
What are the environmental benefits of intensive agriculture?
- “spares” land for conservation
- technology helps use water efficiently (precision irrigation)
- growing bigger livestock means that fewer animals provide more calories
How does intensive agriculture provide livelihoods in global north?
- fewer famers, larger farms
- more reliance on machines/technology
- farmers increasingly rely on off-farm employment (high cost mechanization)
- migrant labour performs many tasks
How does intensive agriculture provide livelihoods in global south?
- dependence on cash crops makes farmers vulnerable to price fluctuations, crop dmg
- low-paid, insecure plantation work
- land tenure issues: small farmers may be displaced for large investors
What are the features of alternative agriculture?
- common in the Global South
- Polyculture: producing a variety of crops and livestock together
- mixture of subsistence (for household consumption) and market production (to sell)
- low inputs, high human labour
What is agroecology?
- app of ecological concepts and principals to design and manage sustainable agricultural ecosystems
- aim to produce food while enhancing habitat both in the soil and above ground
- draws on local and Indigenous knowledge
What is food sovereignty?
- farming based on small farmer autonomy, ecological methods, culturally appropriate foods, gender equity, non-exploitative labour
- La Via Campesina: worldwide peasant movement pushing for food sovereignty
What is Indigenous food sovereignty?
- the focus on cultureally significant foods
- reciprocal replationships w plants, animals
- we can see food itself as having ‘sovereignty’
What are some examples of (re)localizing food systems?
- Community Supported Agriculture, farmers’ markets
- Urban agriculture, Food Not Lawns
- Foraging, ‘guerrilla gardening’
- Food cooperatives, seed banks
What is the challenge to produce enough food?
productivity in low-input farming
- polyculture, crop roation help maintain soils
- resilience: one crop may fail, but not all
- yield may be lower than intensive agriculture, but total productivity may be higher
What is the challenge of distributing food equitably?
- Small-scale farming usually oriented toward local markets and community-level food systems
- Food sovereignty movement focuses more on the needs of food producers than urban consumers
