Knowledge Organiser: Food Security and Management
Key Terms
- Food security: reliable access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food (4 pillars: availability, access, utilisation, stability)
- Agroforestry: growing crops under forest canopy; biodiversity-preserving farming
- HYV crops: high-yield varieties at heart of Green Revolution
- Fairtrade: guaranteed minimum price + community premium for LIC farmers
- Food miles: distance food travels; crude carbon measure
- The nexus: interconnection of food, water, and energy systems
- Monoculture: single-crop farming; efficient but fragile
Must-Know Statistics
- 733 million people chronically hungry (FAO, 2023) — yet world produces enough for 10 billion
- 60% of the world's hungry live in conflict-affected countries
- 70% of all freshwater withdrawals go to agriculture
- 1/3 of all food produced is lost or wasted (1.3 billion tonnes/yr)
- £800/yr: average British household food waste
- Beef uses 20x more land per gram of protein than lentils
- California: 25% of US food from 1% of US farmland
- Green Revolution India: wheat yields trebled 1965–85
- San Joaquin Valley: sinking 28 cm/yr from groundwater extraction
Case Studies at a Glance
- California Central Valley (HIC): 25% US food, drip irrigation, GPS tractors; subsidence 28cm/yr, soil salinisation, 2012–17 drought cut output 40%, migrant labour exploitation
- Ethiopia agroforestry (LIDC): 12m people depend on coffee; shade-grown, no pesticides, 5,000+ endemic species; Fairtrade gives £1.80/kg + community premium; climate change shifting optimal altitude
- Green Revolution: India 1960s–80s; trebled yields; averted famine; also depleted aquifers, degraded soil, increased inequality
- Desert locusts: East Africa 2019–21; 40 billion-strong swarms; 10 countries affected; 35,000 people's daily food eaten per swarm per day
CAPED + PEACE Frameworks
- CAPED (causes): Climate, Access, Population, Environmental degradation, Distribution/waste
- PEACE (evaluate strategies): Productivity, Environment, Access, Cost, Externalities
- Four pillars: Availability, Access, Utilisation, Stability
- L3 answers: compare strategies, acknowledge trade-offs, make a judgement
- Golden rule: Always link production back to access — who actually benefits?
Common Mistakes
- Saying food insecurity is caused by insufficient production: The world produces enough calories for 10 billion people — 733 million go hungry because of access, conflict and distribution failures, not global production shortfalls
- Praising the Green Revolution without evaluating costs: India's wheat yields trebled 1965–85 and famine was averted, but aquifer depletion, soil degradation and rising inequality were direct consequences — always balance benefits with environmental and social costs
- Using "food miles" as the only sustainability measure: A UK-grown tomato in a heated greenhouse can have a higher carbon footprint than a Spanish field-grown tomato transported by lorry — food miles is a crude and often misleading indicator
- Ignoring the nexus in food questions: Agriculture uses 70% of global freshwater withdrawals and is a major energy consumer — food security answers that ignore water and energy links miss the synoptic marks examiners award at Level 3
Memory Aid
- Productivity — Does it increase food production?
- Environment — What is the ecological cost?
- Access — Does it reach the people who need it most?
- Cost — Is it affordable for LIC governments and farmers?
- Externalities — What are the long-term side effects?