Exam Connection

🎯 Exam Connection

Frequency: Food security appears in most OCR B Paper 2 sittings and regularly in AQA Paper 2. It frequently connects to climate change, water management, and development inequality. Very high exam frequency.

Typical question stems:

• "Explain why food insecurity is increasing in some parts of the world." (4–6 marks)
• "Evaluate the effectiveness of strategies to improve food security." (6–8 marks)
• "Assess the view that large-scale commercial farming is the best way to improve global food security." (8 marks)
• "To what extent is food insecurity caused by physical rather than human factors?" (6 marks)
• "Using a named example, explain how one sustainable farming strategy can improve food security." (6 marks)

How to move from Level 1 → 2 → 3:

• Level 1 (1–2 marks): Simple statements without development. "Food insecurity is caused by drought and poverty." "The Green Revolution increased food production." These state facts but do not explain how or why, and do not use evidence.
• Level 2 (3–5 marks): Developed explanation with some evidence. "Food insecurity is caused by poverty — families in sub-Saharan Africa earning £1 a day cannot afford food even when it is available in local markets. Climate change compounds this by reducing crop yields — a 2°C temperature rise could cut yields in sub-Saharan Africa by 20%." Uses cause-and-effect chains and begins to deploy evidence.
• Level 3 (6–8 marks): Evaluates, compares strategies or causes, acknowledges trade-offs, and makes a supported judgement. "Large-scale commercial farming, as in California's Central Valley, is effective at increasing food availability — 25% of US food from 1% of farmland — but relies on groundwater depletion (the San Joaquin Valley sinks 28 cm per year) and is therefore not sustainable long-term. In contrast, Ethiopian agroforestry addresses all four pillars of food security for participating farmers, maintains biodiversity, and has lower environmental impact — but produces lower yields per hectare. The most effective approach depends on the timescale: for immediate food supply, industrial methods produce more; for long-term food security, sustainable methods are essential. Overall, neither approach alone is sufficient — a combination of improved sustainable smallholder farming in LICs with reform of distribution and access systems in HICs is most likely to address the root causes of food insecurity."

The golden rule for this topic: Always connect production strategies back to the four pillars. Does the strategy actually reach the people who are hungry? Does it work in the long term? Is it affordable for LIC governments? These are the questions that separate Level 2 from Level 3 answers.