6.14 - Food Security

Food security and increasing yields

• The world's human population is rising quickly.
• To keep feeding everyone, the amount of food produced globally must rise as well - so that each person still has enough food that is safe to eat and has the right balance of nutrition.
• Food security - Reliable access to enough safe, nutritious food for everyone.

Why farmers focus on raising yield

• There is a limited amount of land available for farming, and it isn't possible to keep clearing more and more land for crops and livestock.
• So the main way to produce more food is to raise the yield - the amount of food produced from a given area of land in a given time.
• Farmers use a range of techniques to increase the yield of their crops and animals, producing more food from the same area without simply taking over more land.

Factors affecting food security

Food security means having enough food to feed a population. Several biological factors affect it, on top of the rising population itself.

Changing diets towards meat and fish

• As people in wealthier countries become better off, their diets change to include more meat and fish.
• Producing meat and fish is a less efficient use of land than growing crops: energy and biomass are lost at each step up a food chain.
• A given area of land feeds far more people when it grows crops directly than when it rears grazing animals.
• Grazing animals are often fed crops that people could have eaten themselves.

Pests, pathogens, and environmental change

• New pests and pathogens - insects, bacteria, fungi, and viruses - can emerge and damage crops and livestock. This reduces yields and can sometimes cause widespread famine.
• Environmental change caused by human activity can reduce how well crops grow, including:
  • A changing climate and altered rainfall patterns
  • Soil pollution

Sustainability and costs

• Farming must be sustainable - meeting today's needs without harming future generations' ability to meet theirs.
• Growing crops for biofuels competes for land that could grow food.
• High input costs - seeds, fertilisers, fuel, and machinery - can make food production too expensive to maintain in some areas.
• Conflict over food and water can disrupt supply further.