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Quiz yourself on Food Resource ManagementGet your flashcardsBuild my revision planTrack my progress⚖️ California vs Ethiopia — Two Food Systems Compared
| Factor | California Central Valley (HIC) | Ethiopian Agroforestry (LIDC) |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | Thousands of hectares per farm; industrial machinery | 1–5 hectares per family; manual and hand-tool farming |
| Water use | Intensive irrigation; groundwater depleted 28cm/yr in places | Rainfall-dependent; forest canopy reduces evaporation |
| Biodiversity | Monoculture; significant biodiversity loss; chemical use | High biodiversity; 5,000+ endemic species preserved |
| Yield | Very high yield per hectare; 25% of US food from 1% of farmland | Lower yield per hectare; diversified crops reduce risk |
| Environmental cost | Subsidence, salinisation, chemical pollution, aquifer depletion | Low environmental impact; enhances carbon sequestration |
| Labour | Mostly migrant workers; exploitation concerns; low wages | Family farming; Fairtrade improves income for participants |
| Climate resilience | Vulnerable to drought — 2012–17 drought cut output 40% | Diversified systems more resilient; climate change still a threat |
| Sustainability | Not sustainable in current form (aquifer depletion) | More sustainable; can continue long-term if climate-adapted |
| Food security pillar | Addresses availability (large volumes) but not equity of access | Addresses all four pillars for farmers; Fairtrade improves stability |
Neither system is perfect. The exam question is: which is more effective, for whom, over what timescale?
Quick Check: Explain one environmental problem caused by intensive farming in California's Central Valley, and why it threatens long-term food security.
The most significant environmental problem is groundwater depletion. Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley pump so much water from underground aquifers that the land has been sinking — the USGS recorded subsidence of up to 28 cm per year in some areas. Once aquifer sediments compact due to over-extraction, they cannot hold as much water in future — the storage capacity is permanently reduced. This threatens long-term food security because if the aquifer is exhausted or critically depleted, the irrigation that makes the Central Valley productive would no longer be possible. The 2012–2017 drought forced farmers to drill ever deeper and more expensive wells, demonstrating how dependent the system is on a non-renewable resource. A farming system relying on depleting groundwater is, by definition, not sustainable.
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