4.3 Population - resource relationship

• Food security

  when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life
• 3 aspects of food security

  food availability, food access, food use
• Amount of the population who are chronically undernourished

  1 in 9 people- especially in Africa, the Middle East and Asia
• Amount of people who suffer from world hunger

  800 million people
• Natural problems that can lead to food shortages

  Soil exhaustion

  Drought

  Floods

  Tropical cyclones

  Pests

  Disease
• Economic and political factors that contribute to food shortages

  Low capital investment

  Rapidly rising population

  Poor distribution/ transport difficulties

  Conflict situations
• Malnutrition

  results from diet deficiency either because of too little food or insufficient balance between proteins, energy foods, vitamins and minerals
• Examples of malnutrition diseases

  Beri-Beri (vitamin B1 deficiency)

  Kwashiorkor (protein deficiency)
• Agriculture technology


  Devices and systems used in growing food and producing natural fibres
• agricultural technology includes

  precision agriculture

  genetic engineering

  integrated pest management

  advances in classical agricultural technologies
• the Green Revolution

  The introduction of high-yielding seeds and modern agricultural techniques to developing countries.

  
• High Yielding variety seed programme


  • Commenced in 1966
  • Introduced new hybrid varieties of five cereals: wheat, rice, maize, sorghum and millet
• Tauranga, New Zealand


  Harvests 3 billion Kiwis a year

  Mechanisation of agriculture- robots harvesting crops much more quickly and efficiently

  Farm labour shortage- helps the labour force as less people have to work and more a replaced by robots. This would be expensive but would stop unnecessary unethical labour and working hours, and would be very reliable, unlike a human who could stop work or not go to work suddenly.
• Syracuse technology garden

  Using drones for pollination

  Stops farmers from having to buy bees to pollinate crops

  Drone flies 10 feet above tree canopy and distributes a specific gram per acre amount of pollen, fertilising 40 acres an hour
• Carrying capacity


  Largest number of individuals of a population that a environment can support
• Ecological footprint

  A sustainability indicator that expresses the relationship between population and the natural environment. It takes into account the use of natural resources by a country's population.
• Six components of ecological footprint

  Built up land

  Fishing ground

  Forest

  Grazing land

  Cropland

  Carbon footprint
• What ecological footprint is measured in

  Global hectares
• Global hectares


  Equivalent to one hectare of biologically productive space with world average productivity
• Biocapacity


  the capacity of an area or ecosystem to generate an ongoing supply of resources and to absorb its wastes
• Carbon footprint

  the total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product
• Influences on ecological footprint

  Size of a country's population

  Level of demand for goods and services in a country

  International trade- imports and exports
• Optimum population


  The one that achieves a given aim in the most satisfactory way.
• Economic optimum


  the level of population that, through the production of goods and services, provides the highest average standard of living
• Underpopulated


  When there are too few people in an area to use the resources available efficiently
• Overpopulated


  When there are too many people in an area relative to the resources and the level of technology available
• Population pressure


  Occurs when population per unit area exceeds the carrying capacity.
• Thomas Malthus

  • 18th - century English intellectual
  • Warned that population growth threatened future generations because, in his view, population growth would always outstrip increases in agricultural production.

  
• Malthus theory


  The belief that there is a finite optimum population size in relation to food supply, and that any increase in population beyond this point would lead to a decline in the standard of living and to war famine and disease.
• Neo-Malthusians


  People who believed in Malthusian Theory and in the idea that population was not only outstripping food but other resources
• Boserup

  Population growth stimulates intensification in agricultural development- opposite of Malthus theory.
• Anti-Malthusians


  contemporary researchers who believe the population boom Malthus witnessed was a temporary, historically specific phenomenon and worry instead that the worldwide population may shrink in the future
• Case study for food shortages

  Yemen and Haiti

  
• When Yemen food shortage is

  Since 2015, the economy has halved meaning that these problems have been going on for longer than this
• Who is being worst affected in Yemen

  high rates of malnutrition are especially prevalent among children under age of 5

  Nursing and pregnant women also at risk of malnutrition
• How many people being affected in Yemen

  17 million people (56% of the population)- would be over 20 million without foreign and humanitarian aid
• Why food shortages in Yemen are occurring

  Ongoing conflict and economic crisis

  Reduced labour opportunities

  Plummeting wages

  Persistent conflict

  Rising food prices

  Depleted productive assets
• When has the Haiti food crisis been occurring

  Hunger and Starvation in Haiti for the past 20 years, whilst it has been making very little progress in improving the cause
• How many people affected in Haiti?

  3.6 million Haitians - 700,000 families

  Approximately 217,000 children are suffering
• Why there is a food shortage in Haiti

  The lack of rainfall has caused major harvest losses

  Caused by the 2021 earthquake causing sever disruption to food supplies

  Political instability

  Rising oil prices

  Series of natural disasters