Chapter 12 Food Production and Environment

• Undernutrition - Not enough intake of nutrients; calories, protein, key nutrients
• Malnutrition - Not having enough nutrition that results in a lack of energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients

  NOT undernutrition
• Overnutrition - eating more than the body needs, resulting in excessive weight gain and fat
• Famine: severe shortage of food due to crop failure, drought, flood, or war etc.
• 10% Rule: choose foods that have 10% or less fat and sodium, and 10% or more fiber
• Food security - being able to get food/have access to food
• Industrial Meat Production:

  • increased meat supply
  • reduced overgrazing
  • keeps food prices down
  • uses large amount of water to irrigate crops fed to animals
  • livestock waste pollute waterways
  • uses large amounts of energy
• Industrial

  high-input industrialized agriculture

  • Major goal: steadily increased crop yield
  • Heavy equipments
  • Large amounts of capital, fossil fuels, water, inorganic fertilizers, and pesticides
  • Monoculture (mono-)
  • Plantation agriculture: cash crops that are primarily used in less developed countries
• Traditional

  Low-input traditional agriculture

  • traditional subsistence; human labor and draft animals for family food
  • traditional intensive agriculture; higher yields through increased labor, animal manure, and water
  • Polyculture farming (poly-): higher biodiversity and soil health
• Green revolution - increased crop yield

  • monocultures of high-yield crops; rice, wheat, and corn
  • large amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, and water
• 2nd green revolution: fast growing varieties of rice and wheat
• Feedlots - an area or building where livestock are fed or fattened up
• Fisheries: Concentration of a particular species suitable for commercial harvesting
• Aquaculture: fish farming; fish are raised in tanks or ponds
• IPM (Integrated pest management)

  Program in which each crop and its pests are evaluated as part of the ecosystem

  Disadvantages:

  • Requires expert knowledge
  • Methods applied in one area does not necessarily work for another
  • Expensive
• Synthetic pesticides: kill the pests

  Biopesticides: Wards off the pests
• 1st Generation Pesticides (organic)

  • Borrowed from plants

  2nd Generation Pesticides (chemical)

  • Lab produced (DDT)
• Broad Spectrum Agents

  • Kills a broad amount of species which can be toxic to the beneficial ones

  Narrow Spectrum Agents

  • Kills specific species
• Synthetic pesticides pros:

  • human lives are saved
  • increases food supplies
  • reduced costs
• Synthetic pesticides drawbacks:

  • accelerates genetic resistance
  • expensive for farmers
  • kills good species unintentionally
  • pollutes environment
  • harms wildlife
  • human health hazard
  • newer pest controls are safer and more effective
• Soil erosion control methods:

  1. terracing (liyue moment)
  2. strip cropping
  3. intercropping
  4. windbreak
• Sustainable aquaculture:

  • Protect mangrove forests and estuaries
  • Improve management of wastes
  • Reduce escape of aquaculture species into the wild
  • Set up self sustaining polyaquaculture systems that combine aquatic plants, fish, and shellfish
  • Certify sustainable forms of aquaculture
• Organic farming

  • can be done locally
  • reduce exposure to pesticides