Food Supply Factors

Enough food, and hunger anyway

Global agriculture produces in the region of 2,800 calories per person per day. A person needs somewhere between about 2,000 and 2,500, depending on age, size and how hard they work. On the arithmetic alone, the problem was solved decades ago. And around 730 million people are undernourished, with something over 2 billion unable to rely on getting enough safe and nutritious food. Both of those are true at the same time, and an answer that does not hold them together has missed the topic. Hunger today is overwhelmingly a question of access rather than of global scarcity: whether food is physically there, whether the people who need it can afford it, and whether anything is stopping it reaching them. That is why the pattern of consumption is so uneven. In high-income countries the average daily intake is well above 3,000 calories, while in the poorest it can sit below 2,200, and the gap is not explained by how much the world grows. That reframing does real work in an exam. It means poverty belongs on the list of causes, not only on the list of consequences: a household that cannot afford seed, fertiliser or a pump grows less, and a household that cannot afford to buy food goes without even when the market is full. It also means that conflict, which stops food moving and drives farmers off their land, now sits behind the majority of the world's worst food crises. This module covers what determines how much food reaches people, and what happens when it does not. The strategies for producing more belong to the sibling module.

Five terms, one of them technical

The third is a precise classification rather than a general word, and using it loosely is a reliable way to lose credit.

Follow the circuit

These six stages show how the consequences of a food shortage become its causes. Put them in order.

• A household cannot afford seed, fertiliser or a way of watering its land
• Yields are lower than the land could support, so there is less to eat and less to sell
• To make up the shortfall, the land is cropped continuously or grazed harder, with no season left fallow
• Nutrients are drawn down and the soil structure breaks up, so it holds less water and erodes
• The same effort now produces even less than it did before
• The household is poorer and hungrier than when the sequence began, and the pressure on the land is greater

Why does hunger persist?

Global agriculture produces more calories than the world population requires, and hundreds of millions of people are undernourished. Which answer explains that?

• Because having enough in total says nothing about who can reach it. Food has to be physically present where people are, which conflict and poor transport can prevent; it has to be affordable, which it is not for a household living on very little when prices rise; and it has to keep arriving, since a supply that fails after one bad harvest leaves people no better off than no supply at all. Distribution, purchasing power and reliability are separate hurdles, and the global total clears none of them.
• The figures are misleading and the world does not really produce enough.
• Population is growing faster than food production can keep up.
• Some countries have not farmed their land as productively as they could.

What limits supply, and what shortage does

The specification names the factors and the impacts separately, and the third column is where an answer earns the top band, because the arrow between the first two columns runs in both directions.

Match each situation to what it limits

Access, not arithmetic

The single most useful sentence you can write on this topic is that the world grows enough and people are hungry anyway. It reframes everything that follows, because it moves the question from how much exists to who can reach it, and almost every mark on this element depends on that move. It also puts poverty on both lists. Most candidates treat it as something hunger causes. It is at least as much something that causes hunger: a family that cannot find the money for seed harvests less than its field would give, and a family that cannot find the money for food goes without while the market is stocked. Writing poverty as a factor affecting supply, not just as an impact, is a small change that demonstrates you have understood the mechanism rather than memorised two lists. Which brings up the commonest structural weakness here: two lists with nothing joining them. Causes in one paragraph, consequences in the next, no relationship. The relationship is the geography. Land worked without rest because a household is short of food loses its fertility, and the next harvest is smaller still; a price rise pushes people onto cheaper, less nutritious food, and undernutrition reduces what they can work and earn. Show one of those circuits and you are explaining rather than describing. Two matters of precision. Famine is a classification with numerical thresholds, not a strong word for hunger, so use it where it applies and say "severe food insecurity" where it does not. And watch the register: explain why a household or a region is short of food, and never write as though people are hungry through failing to try, or as though they are waiting for somebody else to act. Both readings are inaccurate and both cost marks.

Complete the food security facts

World agriculture produces roughly _____ calories per person per day, well above what a person requires, and around 730 million people are undernourished even so, which shows that hunger turns on _____ rather than on global scarcity. Agriculture withdraws about _____ per cent of the freshwater people take, so irrigated farming competes directly with cities and industry where supplies are stressed. A formal declaration of _____ requires measured thresholds to be crossed, including a death rate above two per ten thousand people per day, so the word should not be used for every severe shortage. When prices rose sharply in 2007 and 2008, disturbances followed in more than _____ countries.

Spot the three sound statements

Select the THREE statements that could stand as they are in an answer.

• Poverty belongs among the factors limiting food supply as well as among the consequences of shortage, since a household unable to buy seed or a pump harvests less than its land could give.
• Land cropped without rest to make up a shortfall loses fertility and structure, so the next harvest is smaller still, which is a consequence of food insecurity turning into a cause of it.
• Famine is a formal classification requiring measured thresholds, including acute malnutrition above 30 per cent and more than two deaths per ten thousand per day, so many very severe crises are not declared famines.
• Hunger persists mainly because the world cannot yet produce enough food for everybody.
• Food shortages continue in some regions because the farming there has not been done well enough.
• Population growth has outpaced food production, which is the fundamental cause of undernutrition.

A 6-mark impacts answer, marked

Explain the impacts of food insecurity. [6 marks] The most direct impact is undernutrition, which affects around 730 million people and does damage well beyond hunger itself. A child who does not get enough energy and nutrients over a sustained period grows less than they should and falls ill more easily, and because undernutrition damages concentration and keeps children out of school it reduces what they can earn as adults, so a shortage of food in one generation becomes poverty in the next. Where a shortage becomes extreme it can reach the thresholds for a formal declaration of famine, which under the classification used internationally requires at least a fifth of households to be in extreme food shortage, acute malnutrition above 30 per cent and a death rate above two people per ten thousand each day. A second impact is felt in prices, and it reaches far beyond the places that are short of food: when global prices rose sharply in 2007 and 2008, disturbances followed in more than thirty countries, because the cost of food is felt immediately by everybody and a rise that is an inconvenience to a wealthy household is a crisis for one spending most of its income on eating. The third impact is the one that matters most for the long term, because it turns back into a cause. A household that is short of food works its land harder to make up the gap, cropping continuously and grazing more heavily rather than leaving ground fallow, and the soil loses its nutrients and its structure, holds less water and begins to erode. UN estimates put roughly a third of the world's soil in a degraded condition. The result is that the same effort produces less than before, so the shortage that drove the pressure on the land is deeper than when the sequence began. What earned the marks: three distinct impacts rather than three versions of one; each explained as a chain rather than named; figures attached throughout; the famine threshold stated precisely rather than used as a loose word; and the third impact identified as feeding back into the causes, which is the observation that lifts the answer.

Find the two that would cost marks

Five sentences from answers about food insecurity. Two of them would lose credit for how they are written rather than for being factually wrong. Tap those TWO.

• These regions remain hungry because the people there have not organised their farming properly.
• Enough food is produced globally, so the question is whether it is present where people are and whether they can afford it.
• The population there is simply waiting for aid agencies to arrive and feed them.
• Land cropped without a fallow season to cover a shortfall loses fertility, so the following harvest is smaller again.
• Agriculture uses around 70 per cent of the freshwater withdrawn worldwide, so irrigation competes with other demands.

Build the central sentence

Assemble the sentence that reframes the whole topic.

Four shortages, four causes

Each situation is a real food problem. Work out what is actually limiting supply before proposing anything.

• A district has full market stalls and rising levels of child undernutrition. There has been no drought and no conflict.
• Yields on smallholdings have fallen for several years running. Nothing has changed about the rainfall, and the land has been cropped every season without a break.
• An irrigation scheme and a growing city draw on the same river, and in dry years there is not enough for both.
• A region at war is facing acute shortage. Its soils are good, its rainfall is normal, and its farmers have left their land.

Explain the factors

Explain the factors that affect food supply, and the impacts of food insecurity. [9 marks]

• Enough food is produced globally; the obstacle is access rather than scarcity
• Poverty among the causes, not only among the effects
• Figures where you have them, such as the share of freshwater agriculture withdraws or the number of people undernourished
• Famine thresholds used precisely, not as a general word for hunger
• Circumstances rather than people failing