Lesson video

Hello, my name's Mrs. Harking.

Today's lesson is food resources taken from the unit "Natural resources: "Can Earth meet our needs." We will explore the extremes of the inequality and access to food.

So we'll be looking at the extreme wealthy end of the spectrum where people have so much money they can overpurchase food and we'll also be looking at the other end of the spectrum.

And that does mean that this lesson will cover topics such as death due to famine.

I'm looking forward to learning with you today.

Let's get started.

Our outcome today is to describe global patterns of food security and explain factors that affect food security.

Here are some keywords that will be useful to know before we start the lesson today.

First of all, we have GDP per capita.

You've probably heard about this before, and used it in lessons.

The exact definition is the total value of all the goods and services produced in a country.

So it's gross domestic product, and this is in a year divided by the population.

So put really simply, it's the amount of money that country is earning divided by the number of people in that country.

So we're getting an average income almost.

That's a very simplified version of the definition.

Undernourished occurs when someone isn't receiving enough calories or essential nutrients to grow and function well.

So it's not just calories, it's essential nutrients as well.

We will be coming back to that one during the lesson.

And then food security, the ability of people to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

Right, let's get started.

We've got three sections to our lesson.

First of all, global patterns of food security.

Then factors that affect food security.

And then finally, consequences of food security variation.

First of all, global patterns of food security.

Sam says, "Roughly 1/3 of all food produced globally is wasted each year, while at the same time nearly 800 million people go hungry.

That's enough food to feed every undernourished person in the world twice over." This is quite a shocking fact.

We need to take a moment to let this sink in.

So if all that wasted food was used, nobody would be going hungry.

Time for a check for understanding.

True or false? The amount of food wasted each year could feed the millions of undernourished people.

It's true.

Roughly 1/3 of all food produced globally is wasted every year, while at the same time nearly 800 million people go hungry.

So that's enough food to feed every undernourished person in the world twice over.

Here we have a graph that shows us the daily per capita supply of calories versus the GDP per capita.

This is taken in 2022.

So on our x-axis at the bottom, we have got the GDP per capita.

And then on the y-axis going up, we can see the calories.

You'll notice as well we have a key here and the key shows us the different continents in different colours.

Each plot on the graph is shown in a different colour to represent which continent that country is from.

Generally, people in countries with a higher GDP per capita buy more food.

And we can see that from the positive correlation shown on the graph.

Notice this data is for calories supplied, not necessarily the calories eaten.

Much of these calories may end up as food waste.

We know that actually 1/3 of all food ends up as food waste, don't we? The data on the graph can also be represented on a map.

So here we have a choropleth map, which shows the number of calories per person in 2022.

And the darker the colour, the more calories on average per person in that country are supplied.

Remember, that's not consumed.

It doesn't mean they've eaten those calories 'cause some are wasted, but they've bought those calories.

So if we have a look at the top of our scatter graph, we can actually match that up to the darkest locations on our choropleth map.

So we can see here that on the scatter graph, the spots are mainly shown for North America and Europe.

And when we look at where those darkest colours are on our choropleth map, we see a really similar pattern, don't we? We see the darkest colours showing 3,800 kilocalories and more are in Europe and in North America.

The same pattern is seen at the bottom end of our scatter graph.

So countries which have a low income and a low daily per capita supply of calories are shown to be mainly in Africa.

Also, we've got some in Asia, for example, Afghanistan there.

And when we go across to our choropleth map, we can see that actually spatially, this is mainly Sub-Saharan Africa and it's worth noting that there are a lot of countries in Africa which are not in that bottom bracket.

So, for example, Morocco, Egypt, these countries have far higher GDP per capita and also daily per capita supply of calories.

So not every African country.

Time for a check for understanding.

A country averaging 3,800 kilocalories per person per day in 2022 is.

Is it A, North America, B, the UK, C, Australia, or D, the USA? So for this task, you actually need to be able to locate these countries as well.

Give it a go.

Well done.

So the country that averages 3,800 kilocalories per person per day in 2022 is the USA.

So that is the darkest shaded country and that represents 3,800 kilocalories or more on our choropleth map on the right.

For our task now.

First of all, I would like you to name two continents with the highest calorie supply.

Secondly, I would like you to give the daily supply of calories per person for a specific country with a high calorie supply.

Then I would like you to name the continent with the lowest calorie supply.

And question four, is the calorie supply the same for the whole continent? Then I would like you to tell me for question five, can you give the daily supply of calories per person for a specific country with a low calorie supply? Right, pause the video now to give yourself time to do this.

Good luck, everyone.

Well done, everyone.

Let's take a look at some answers.

Your answers may look like this.

First of all, name the two continents with the highest calorie supply.

You should have Europe and North America.

Next, for question two, give the daily supply of calories per person for a specific country with a high calorie supply.

So I've given an example here.

The United Kingdom averaged between 3,200 and 3,500 kilocalories per person per day.

You may have a different country and that is fine.

For question three, name the continent with the lowest calorie supply.

So this is Africa.

Question four, is the calorie supply the same for the whole continent? So no, Sub-Saharan Africa has much lower averages, whereas Algeria, Libya, and Egypt have over 2,900 kilocalories per person per day.

Question five, give the daily supply of calories per person for a specific country with a low calorie supply.

So I've chosen Somalia, you may have chosen somewhere else and this received between 1,800 and 2,100 kilocalories per person per day.

How did you get on? Well done.

If you want to add to any of your answers now, pause the video.

Well done, everyone.

Let's move on to the next section of the lesson.

We now have factors that affect food security.

Food security is the ability of people to access sufficient, so enough, safe and nutritious food.

Time for a check for understanding now.

Which do you think is the best definition of food insecurity? Is this A, the ability of people to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food? B, the inability of people to access sufficient food to avoid starvation or C, the inability of people to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

The correct answer is C, the inability of people to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

So it's not just about the amount of food, it's the fact that it also has to be nutritious and safe.

It's not A because we're looking at insecurity, not food security, but food insecurity.

There are many factors that affect food security.

They can be grouped into human and physical categories.

For human, we could look at poverty and conflict as causes of variation in food security.

And for physical factors, we can look at natural hazards and unpredictable weather.

We could also look at soil quality.

We'll start by looking at the human factors.

Poverty limits people's ability to buy enough nutritious food.

We saw that on that scatter graph, didn't we? The fact that actually the people with the lowest GDP of the countries with the lowest GDP per capita actually had the lowest access to calories as well.

This can lead to insufficient nutrients or even famine.

Famine is the severe and widespread shortage of food and that can lead to some serious consequences, which we'll look at in the next section.

The other human factor we're going to look at is conflict.

And this disrupts farming, transport and food distribution as the land may be unsafe to farm and infrastructure like roads and storage facilities can be damaged or destroyed.

This can mean that food is not produced and that food is not transported to the people who need it.

Farmers may flee their land, markets can shut down and food prices often rise sharply, making access even harder for vulnerable communities.

And I'm sure you've all heard about situations in the news where this has happened.

Now we're going to move on to have a look at physical factors that can affect food security.

First of all, natural hazards, such as droughts, floods, hurricanes or locust swarms can destroy crops.

Global warming is increasing the risk from some natural hazards and making extreme weather unpredictable.

Poor or degraded soil reduces yields and the amount of crops grown, for example, in areas experiencing desertification, crop yields can drop dramatically.

Just in case you haven't heard of desertification before, it simply means where land is becoming desert.

So in those areas, the soil quality is drastically reducing and without those nutrients in the soil, farmers cannot use the land to grow crops.

Time for a check for understanding.

True or false? When soil quality gets worse, crop yields rise.

Yes, this is false.

Can you tell me why? Yes, so poor or degraded soil reduces yields.

Yields are, remember, the amount of crops growing.

For example, in areas experiencing desertification, crop yields drop dramatically.

Time for our task now.

Can you complete the definition of food security? Food security is the ability of people to access.

And we've got three gaps there.

What are they? Food.

So food security is the ability of people to access food.

There's a second part to our task as well.

I would like you to complete the flow diagram to explain the causes of variation in food security.

So here we've got the causes in the bubbles above, and these are all leading to the variation in food security.

So I've done an example for you.

Poverty limits people's ability to buy enough nutritious food.

Can you think of the other three examples of the causes? Remember, we looked at physical and human.

And can you complete that flow diagram for me, please? Pause the video now to give yourself time to do the task.

Well done, everyone.

Let's take a look at some answers.

For question one, complete the definition of food security.

Food security is the ability of people to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

The key thing there was that it was not just about the amount of food, it's that actually, it has to be safe and nutritious as well.

Did you get all three of those? You might have used variations on the words.

You might want to tweak your answer now, just improve it.

Right, let's have a look at question two.

Complete the flow diagram to explain the causes of variation in food security.

Your answer may look like this.

So we had the example already.

Poverty limits people's ability to buy enough nutritious food.

The other three examples you could have used were conflict disrupts farming, transport and food distribution.

Natural disasters, for example, droughts, can destroy crops.

And poor or degraded soil reduces yields.

All of these lead to variation in food security.

So some areas will have more than others because of these problems. We're on to the last part of today's lesson now, consequences of food security variation.

You may recognise this image, the eatwell plate.

It's an image that we see quite a lot when we go to maybe doctor's surgeries.

It might be a poster on the wall.

You may have seen it in.

So this is probably something you've seen before.

It's what we are aiming to eat each day, a nutritious and balanced diet.

Undernourishment occurs when somebody isn't receiving enough calories or essential nutrients to grow and function well.

So when this eatwell plate that you've seen before isn't being achieved, then this can lead to the following problems, health problems, fatigue, so extreme tiredness, and even death.

And we are going to be looking at severe consequences of food insecurity today in this section.

Here we have a choropleth map that shows the share of the population that is undernourished in 2022.

So this shows us the percentage of people in that country that are undernourished.

We can see that there are many countries across the world that have got 20% of their population undernourished, 35%.

We can even see some countries that are reaching 40 and 45%.

So almost half of the people in that country are undernourished.

Lucas ask, "What about the UK? What percentage of the population is undernourished?" Right, I'm going to have a look where the UK is and identify the colour.

Then I'm going to compare that to the key at the bottom, that bar at the bottom that shows us the different shades of orange to work out what the share of the population is for the UK.

So I can see that that pale orange colour is actually between 0 and 5%.

So in the UK, we're very lucky that there's very few undernourished people.

It doesn't mean there's nobody because all we know from here is that it's between 0 and 5%.

And I can tell you there are some people in the UK that are undernourished.

Quick check for understanding now.

It is possible to be overweight and undernourished at the same time.

Yeah, so that one is true.

Can you tell me why? Yes, so under nourishment occurs when somebody isn't receiving enough calories or essential nutrients to grow and function well.

So it's possible to overeat but not eat enough of the right foods to acquire sufficient nutrients.

Health problems caused by undernourishment include weakened immunity.

That means you can get poorly easier.

Anaemia.

That's when you don't have enough iron in your body and that could lead to other problems as well, such as breathlessness.

And rickets.

Rickets is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D, calcium or phosphates, leading to soft, weak bones in children.

And you can see on the left-hand side here we've got x-rays showing the legs of those with rickets.

So on one side, you see the legs are bowed outwards and on the other side the legs are bent inwards.

So the bones are not strong enough to hold the weight of the body correctly.

These health problems and fatigue can prevent people from working, meaning there are knock-on consequences for household incomes and therefore people's quality of life.

There is a particular issue for children who are malnourished as this will affect them for the rest of their lives.

Famine is severe, widespread food scarcity.

It causes undernourishment and even death.

Here we can see a graph which shows deaths from famines by region and decade.

So along the x-axis at the bottom, we can see the decades and along the y-axis to the left, we can see the deaths, the number of deaths since 1960 where almost 30 million people died from famine.

The numbers have come down dramatically, which is really positive.

We can also see that there's been a shift from pre-1970, a lot more deaths from famine in Asia.

And actually post-1970, the majority of deaths from famine are in Africa.

In 2020, we can see that is still the case.

Ending hunger by 2030 is the second of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted in 2015.

So a really good goal to have and actually the number of deaths from famine have dropped so much.

Surely this is quite attainable.

Unfortunately, we're not on track to meet this goal.

So those deaths from famine seem to be hard to prevent.

Check for understanding time now.

True or false? Famine only happens when there is a drought.

That's false, isn't it? So can you tell me why? Yes, there's other reasons, isn't there, for famine occurring.

So famine is severe and widespread food scarcity.

This may well happen if there's an extreme drought occurring affecting crops, but drought is not the only cause of famine.

Floods and conflicts are other examples of causes of famine.

In countries where food is over purchased, significant amounts of food waste are thrown away before it's eaten.

As the food breaks down, it releases the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.

This worsens global warming.

Time for a check for understanding now.

True or false? The consequences of variation in food security are only felt in food scarce countries.

Is this true or false? Yeah, that one's false, isn't it? Can you tell me why? Yeah, so food waste is also a problem in food secure countries.

However, countries where food is scarce do suffer worse impacts.

Time for our task now.

This is our final task of the day.

So I would like you to firstly improve this statement.

Undernourishment occurs when someone isn't receiving enough calories.

Is that accurate? Is there more we need to add there? Right, number two, complete the flow diagram to explain the consequences of variation in food security.

One has been done for you.

You'll notice that this is an extension of our previous flow diagram.

So we started with causes and we're now moving on to consequences.

I have done the first one for you.

So health problems caused by undernourishment include weakened immunity, anaemia, and rickets.

Can you think of the other two impacts of food security? Remember, we can think about the consequences for countries that have food insecurity and for countries that are potentially overpurchasing food.

Pause the video now to give yourselves time to do this.

Good luck, everyone.

Well done.

Let's take a look at the answers.

For question one, improve this statement.

Undernourishment occurs when someone isn't receiving enough calories.

We needed to add "Or essential nutrients to grow and function well." Persistent undernourishment can lead to health problems, fatigue, which is extreme tiredness, and even death.

For question two, complete the flow diagram to explain the consequences of variation in food security.

Your answers may look like this.

Firstly, we had health problems caused by undernourishment include weakened immunity, anaemia, and rickets.

Then you adding two more.

So I've added health problems and fatigue and prevents people from working.

Famine can even lead to deaths.

You might have split that across two.

Then I have for the countries that are overpurchasing, food waste produces methane, worsening global warming.

Did you get all of that? Is there anything you can add? Well done, everyone.

We're onto our summary now.

Roughly 1/3 of all food produced globally is wasted each year, while at the same time almost 800 million people go hungry.

Generally people in countries with a higher GDP per capita buy more food.

Food security is the ability of people to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

Poverty, conflict, natural disasters and soil quality affect food security.

Undernourishment occurs when someone isn't receiving enough calories or essential nutrients to grow and function well.

Thank you for learning with me today.

I hope you enjoyed it.

See you next time.

Bye.