Lesson video

Hello, geographers.

My name is Mrs. Griffiths.

Welcome to today's lesson.

We're gonna be focusing on the patterns of food security around the world today.

We're gonna be thinking about what is food security and thinking about what are the impacts of food insecurity on the environment, on people, and on the economy.

So let's make a start.

Our outcome for today is as follows: "I can describe inequalities in global food security and explain the impacts of food insecurity on people, economies, and the environment." So we're going to be able to describe, but also explain the impacts.

We have some keywords today.

Those are food security, which is when people at all times have access to sufficient safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.

Food insecurity: being without reliable access to sufficient, affordable, nutritious food.

Famine, which is a widespread, serious shortage of food; in the worst case, leading to starvation and death.

Undernutrition: when people do not consume enough nutrients to cover their needs for energy and growth, or to maintain a healthy immune system.

So we're gonna look out for those keywords in the lesson because we now have their definitions.

So how does this lesson work? Well, the title is Global patterns of food security, and we have two parts to it.

We're gonna think about, How does food security vary around the world? to start with And then, What are the impacts of food insecurity? So let's make a start on that first part, How does food security vary around the world? Food security is when people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.

Now what does that involve? There are different aspects to it.

So one aspect is food availability.

This is linked to food production and/or imports.

And it means that these are sufficient within the country in which you live.

A second aspect is food access.

So this is about affordability, whether people can afford to buy or produce enough food to feed their family.

And thirdly, we have food utilisation.

Now cooking and food storage doesn't always lead to food that can be consumed and there is food waste.

So this is linked to not having enough food, might be to do with a loss of food from poor storage.

So you can see food security has different aspects to it, as does food insecurity.

Now globally, there are areas of food surplus.

Those are secure and food deficit, those places where food insecurity is characteristic.

If we look at this map of daily supply of calories per person per day, this is looking at food availability per person per day in terms of calories.

And it's shown as a choropleth map using colour where the deeper the colour, the more the calories per person per day.

It shows an uneven pattern of calories available.

But remember, it doesn't exactly measure food actually eaten because as we mentioned, when we are thinking about the different aspects of food security, food utilisation isn't always a hundred percent.

Some food supplies are wasted.

Now, despite this uneven pattern, you know, the eye is drawn to the darkest areas on the map.

When we think about North America, parts of Western Europe, parts of southwest Asia, comparing that to perhaps the lighter areas in South Asia, in central and East Africa, we can see there is a definitely an uneven pattern.

But it's fair to say we live in a more equal world than we did in the 20th century.

So in Asia, the available calories per person are more than 80% of those in North America.

However, 50 years ago it was a different story.

So people in Asia on average only had access to the food supplies equivalent to 70% of North America's food supply.

So things have become less unequal over time.

Now Lucas asks, "How much energy do we need?" So that's fair, isn't it? When we think about the amount we eat and we just measure that in calories and think about energy, do we all need the same amount of energy? So the United Nations estimates the minimum daily requirement of energy per person, according to age, sex, height, and activity level.

So it actually varies between the sexes, between the ages, it varies depending on your job and obviously your size.

Now he also asks, how does.

Does climate, sorry, have an effect? And yes, it certainly does.

So extremes of climate, hot and cold, do have some impact on the minimum number of calories you might need to get through the day to regulate your temperature.

But it also depends what your job is, what activity you are doing in that environment.

So lifestyle plays a part.

So the calories required per person, per day do vary by country, as we've said for those reasons.

But the United Nations comes up with national averages which range from 1600 to 2100 kilocalories per day.

Now what's interesting when we know that range is if we go back to the scale on this choropleth map, you can see that the minimum colour actually that any country is, is in that range from 1800 kilocals to 2100 kilocals.

And then the upper level, remember we can see countries who that are characterised as being the darkest part of this choropleth map.

So that's above 3,800 kilocals per day.

We can see that range shows us that in, theory, there appears to be lots of food across the world.

There appears to be more than sufficient food within that range across the world.

And we can see that some countries have much more.

So you can imagine that some of that food could be redistributed.

Surely you've got enough food to feed the world.

So Sofia says, "If there's sufficient food available, why do people still go hungry in the world?" That's a good question.

In 2022, 2.

4 billion people were affected by moderate to severe food insecurity: a lack of reliable access to sufficient, affordable, nutritious food.

Now, 2.

4 billion, that sounds like a lot of people, how many does that mean within the context globally? Well, within a global population of 8 billion, about 8 billion, 10% suffer from severe food insecurity.

And a further 20% have moderate food insecurity.

So when we look at that 2.

4 billion people, that's 30% of the global population, which leaves 70% that experience food security or mild food insecurity.

Check for you here.

True or false: Most people worldwide are affected by food insecurity.

Is that true or is that false? Now remember in a moment I'm gonna ask you to explain why.

So pause the video, have a think and then restart it when you want to give me an answer.

And if you said, "Well, that's false," can you explain why? The explanation we had was 30% of the global population experience moderate or severe food insecurity.

About 10% experience severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations.

Now clearly that's still far too many people and any one person who experiences severe food insecurity is too many.

But it's not true to say that most people worldwide are affected by food insecurity.

So 30% of the global population are affected by moderate or severe food insecurity.

Question here, is there a geographical pattern to food insecurity? So, where do those people live? Here we have an interesting graphic where we've got proportional circles for different regions or continents of the world.

So we can see that the biggest green circle here is for Asia, and that represents the fact that it has the largest population.

So over four, or 4.

7 billion people live in Asia.

Now, within those green circles, we can see there's a yellow circle and red circle; the yellow representing the overall moderate or severe food insecurity and the red just showing the focus of the severe food insecurity in proportion to the whole population.

So we can actually see that there are most, there is the largest number of people affected by food insecurity in Asia, closely followed by Africa.

A very small proportion comparatively of the people living in North America and Europe are affected by moderate or severe food insecurity and a larger amount are affected by it in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So this is an FAO infographic that I thought you'd be interested in.

All of these numbers are in millions.

You're gonna have an opportunity to have a little closer look at this diagram a little bit later on.

Now the pattern of food insecurity does have a geography to it, as we've seen, but it's also a pattern of poverty.

So it's linked to economics.

People living in extreme poverty, which is defined as less than $2.

15 cents a day, do not have enough food to meet their daily needs.

For example, their diet lacks protein.

Between 730 and 780 million people worldwide face hunger.

And these three images show you plates of food taken from a website called Dollar Street, which demonstrate what poverty looks like.

So we have relatively small amounts of food prepared for the family.

We have relatively plain amounts of food prepared for the family, a lot of it focused on carbohydrate.

So I'm gonna show you a range of plates that link to incomes.

'Cause here we can see we've got the income per family per month.

We've got three examples here.

I've got some further examples on the slides going forward.

So you can see how the type of food that is prepared, changes with income.

So people on lower incomes, but those who are living above that poverty line, that extreme poverty line of $2.

15 cents a day can mostly afford enough food.

So remember these are people who have affected by moderate food insecurity, but mostly they're eating enough food and they can afford some protein that may only be once a week, provided once a week.

So we've got photographs here of food prepared by a family in Nepal, the Philippines, and India again here.

So we can see a little bit of a difference in terms of what's on the plate.

So as I say, these plates come from families who live on incomes equivalent to the average income in lower middle income countries.

If we move on to look at newly emerging economies, and here we've got examples from India, Vietnam, and Brazil.

There is a growing middle class in these countries and we can see there's a difference when we look at the dishes of food.

These plates of food were prepared by families that can afford a more nutritious diet.

They eat more protein than poorer groups.

So their level of food security has significantly increased, but we can also see that their income has increased.

And then lastly, if we have a look at higher income countries, We have examples here from South Africa and Austria, which are countries in which most of the population experiences food security.

Meals are different across the day.

So that's different to some of the other families we've looked at.

And the diet is varied and sufficient.

These dishes were all prepared by wealthy families who are food secure.

Which the following is or are true? Now we've got four statements there for you to read, and then pause the video to have a think about it, restart it when you think you know the answer.

How did you get on? If you said, "Well, three of them are true apart from B," you'd be absolutely right.

So extreme poverty means living on $2.

15 cents a day.

That's true.

Within NEEs, there is huge variation in food consumption.

We've just seen that with a country of India.

And then middle class families on higher income eat more protein.

That is also true.

Okay, practise task for you now.

Firstly, can you define food security? Secondly, can you describe the pattern of food insecurity using that diagram we've had a look at earlier? Remember, we have some proportional circles there, but also some number facts for you to use.

Remember all of the numbers are in millions.

And then thirdly, can you use online resources to explore global inequalities in food security and consumption? The website Dollar Street is a good place to start.

So, I suggest you pause the video now, grab a pen, log on to have a look at this website as well, and then restart the video when you want to check your answers.

Okay, how do we get on? So we have a definition here of food security.

Your answer may look something like this: When people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.

Secondly, I asked you to describe the pattern of global food insecurity.

And your answer may look a bit like this one: So 30% of the global population is affected by moderate or severe food insecurity.

Most of those live in Asia or Africa, which is home to 51% and 38% of those affected by severe food insecurity worldwide, respectively.

Europe and North America combined have less than a quarter of the population that live with severe food insecurity, compared to that in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So what I like about that answer is we've used some of the numbers, we've worked out some percentages, and we've been able to compare different regions.

Well done if you've got something like that.

How did you get on with logging on online, having a look at that Dollar Street website? Or perhaps you used some other online resources.

No doubt you found that there are similarities between the dishes prepared by families around the world on similar income levels.

While it's true that food is sort of culturally specific, actually, at different income levels, particularly the lower income levels, what families will eat will be similarly simple and based on carbohydrates.

Families have similar utensils and cooking facilities at home, though they live on different continents or in distant regions.

And we've also got this finding that there's a huge variation between families who live in the same country, given the disparity in incomes between the richest and the poorest, in particular in low income countries and newly emerging economies.

No doubt you had some other good observations as well.

So well done for having a go at that investigation.

Okay, for the second part of our lesson, I want you to think about what are the impacts of food insecurity? What are the impacts of it? So food insecurity has a number of different impacts on people, the economy and the environment.

The first we have is famine.

Secondly, undernutrition, thirdly, soil erosion.

We have rising food prices and also social unrest.

So let's have a look at those one by one.

Famine.

What is it? It's a widespread, serious shortage of food and may be the result of severe food insecurity.

In the worst cases, famines lead to starvation and death.

From 1959 to '61, China experienced a terrible famine as a result of changes to the organisation of its economy, its industry and agriculture.

And those changes were made by those people who are in charge of the government.

This period of government led change from '58 to '62 was known as "the Great Leap Forward," but in fact, demand for food dramatically outstripped the local supply of food, causing many millions of people to die of starvation.

So here we have a bar graph of deaths from famine by continent and decades.

So fairly grim statistics.

These are organised by decade and you'll note that the 2020s are included within it.

But clearly the total famine death in the 2020s is an estimate based on data from very early on within that decade.

Now you can see the bars are broken down by region of the world, by continent.

And if we look at that decade of the 1960s, we can clearly see the impact of that '59 to '61 famine in China.

A terrible, terrible period in Chinese history.

Famine is still a major global problem, but famines have killed far fewer people over the last four decades.

True or false, then: Famine may occur as a result of food insecurity.

Pause the video now, but talk to your partner and then restart it.

Remember, I'll need you to explain your answer.

And if you said true, did you have an explanation for that? I wonder what it is.

Our explanation is: Famine occurs in populations affected by severe food insecurity.

The global number of deaths from famine has significantly reduced over the last 40 years.

Well done on that.

Now, populations that experience severe food insecurity are likely to be undernourished.

So undernutrition, this was our second impact we wanted to look at.

Here we got a choropleth map, which gives us the share of the population that is undernourished.

And we're using this colour family of red.

So the darkest red means the highest share of the population is affected by undernutrition, so face hunger.

If I add some ring details I can show you where it is that under nutrition is worst in the world, and those regions are East, Central and West Africa, if we think about it in terms of the share of the population, but also South, and Southwest Asia.

The growth of one in five children under five years of age has been stunted by undernutrition worldwide.

When undernourished, children are more likely to die as a result of an infectious disease also.

And most undernourished children live in low income countries and newly-emerging economies.

So that's the second impact, undernutrition.

Now here we have a line graph looking at the share of the population that's undernourished.

So we switch from a choropleth map to a line graph focusing in on the regions, the five regions of the world most affected.

So over 10% of the population are undernourished.

Now let's have a look at how that share of the population has changed over time.

If I split the graph in half, let's have a look at the first half of this timeline.

So is talking about 2000 to about 2015.

So here, the share of the population affected by undernourishment declined in all of these regions.

However, in the second half of this period of time, we see an increase in the share that are undernourished in all but South Asia.

So it's interesting to look at how these things have changed over time, as well as thinking about the spatial geography.

What doesn't this graph show us? Well, this graph is focused on share of the population rather than absolute numbers of people that are undernourished.

As I say, it shows us the percentage affected rather than the total number.

And these are the regions just affected in terms of more than 10%.

So we haven't got a whole world picture there, have we? It also doesn't tell us that actually, the largest group of people affected by undernourishment are in South Asia because it's plotting a share of the population.

So 313 million people in South Asia are affected by undernutrition, which is more than any other region of the world.

So it's always worth asking what doesn't a graph show us as well as what does it.

So we've had a look at the impacts, we've had a look at famine, we've had a had a look at undernutrition, now we're onto soil erosion.

So this one is an environmental impact.

A deficit of food to supply a growing population leads to land being deforested, overgrazed and potentially over cultivated.

Now these are all phenomenon that can have big impacts on the soil.

High population growth in Africa, Sahel, for example, has led to the expansion of agriculture into fragile, arid or semi arid areas.

And this accelerates soil erosion and land degradation, ultimately in this sort of environment, that semi arid climate leads to desertification.

Did you know that Mali and the Sahel is among the countries most affected by food insecurity? Climate change, it's true, has compounded problems related to its food deficits.

So an example there.

But what's the process by which food insecurity is linked to soil erosion? It feels like it's almost the other way round.

So let's have a look at that process.

So lack of supply, food supply, leads to intensification of farming.

As a result, land is not given enough time to recover and restore nutrients.

The soil becomes infertile.

As a result of this, the crops are struggling to grow.

A lack of vegetation cover means that the soil is more vulnerable to erosion, potentially wind erosion in an arid environment.

And the land becomes desertified.

So we can see that lack of supply leads to its intensification, which leads to land degradation.

So that's the process.

Another impact to food insecurity is rising food prices.

So food prices increase as a result of food insecurity when there's a lack of supply or when demand increases.

Key factors include: reduced harvests, for example, as a result of climate change.

Also disrupted supply chains, for example, as a result of conflict.

We also have the idea that the price of fossil fuels is a factor in rising food prices because it affects the cost of fertiliser.

And this is something that we've seen in recent history.

If we think about the example of wheat prices that went up as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this was because Ukraine is, was historically a real bread basket country, producing much more food than the population could eat, so that it was exporting around the world.

But not only that, so I've got the idea that Ukraine's grain exports were disrupted, but also gas supplies from Russia were cancelled in terms of European countries, which affected fertiliser production.

So it affected the cost of producing fertilisers from fossil fuels.

Here we have quite a complicated-looking graph with lots of different lines on it, but let's maybe focus just on that blue line.

This is the UN's food price index over time.

So looking at affordability of food and the way that food prices change over time.

When did global food prices increase significantly within that period? Can you give me a date range? Well, we've highlighted this period, which is spring 2020 to the start of 2022.

So thinking about the impact of conflict, but also of course the COVID-19 pandemic and the way that disrupted imports and exports around the world.

Now rising prices also has a knock on impact in terms of social unrest.

So when food becomes less affordable, it often leads to protests on the streets.

The high price of food was one of the key causes of protests across North Africa and Southwest Asia in the early 2010s, known as the "Arab Spring." And there was significant reaction from some authoritarian governments as a result of this uprising.

In 2024, nationwide protests about the cost of living in newly emerging economy Nigeria saw people on the streets chanting, "We are hungry." Associated violence resulted in government curfews in the second-largest state of Kano.

So these are real world examples of rising food prices and the related social unrest.

Check for you here.

Which of the following statements is or are true? I'm gonna let you read through those four statements, discuss it with a partner, and then restart the video when you have an answer.

How did you get on? Three of them are true, but B is not.

Soil erosion causes food insecurity, never the other way round.

Well that's not true 'cause we've just looked at that process, haven't we? But soil erosion is an environmental impact to food insecurity, A, that's true.

Food prices increased from 2020 as a result of disrupted supply change, that's true.

And D, in recent years, rising food prices has led to social unrest in some regions.

That's absolutely true.

Well done.

So I've got a task for you here.

Can you explain how food insecurity affects people and the environment in which they live? So grab a pen, think about how you're going to explain that and talk about perhaps a range of different impacts, maybe how they're linked, that's my hint.

So pause the video now and then restart it when you want to check your answer.

Okay.

How did you get on? Quite a tricky question.

Your answer, of course, may include something like this.

Let's have a look what we had.

Where there's a lack of supply or rising demand, food insecurity causes prices to rise and ultimately may result in social unrest across a country or region.

On a smaller scale, people who are affected by severe food insecurity are likely to be undernourished with related negative impacts on their health, such as stunted growth in young children.

Food insecurity can also affect the environment where lack of food drives farmers to overgraze their land, which becomes degraded.

The soil becomes more vulnerable to the effects of wind, a particular problem in semi arid climates.

And you can see how they might have developed their answer by just adding in a real world environment, like perhaps talking about Mali or talking about the Sahel there.

So I like what they've done in terms of talking about problems at a country scale, but also perhaps problems at a community or a family scale.

And then gone on to look at the environment.

They've really hit the brief of that question, haven't they? Okay, so what have we been looking at in summary? Well, globally, there are areas of food surplus known as secure, and food deficit, insecurity.

There are global inequalities in food supply and calorie intake also.

30% of the global population is affected by moderate or severe food insecurity.

Clearly a big problem for our time.

And impacts of food insecurity include famine, undernutrition, soil erosion, rising prices, and social unrest.

And we've looked at how some of those are linked.

We've covered quite a lot today, but I think you'll agree that's an interesting overview of this issue for our time, which is about food security.

And I look forward to seeing you again soon.