AQA Biology 4.7.5.1
Factors affecting food security
Enough food, for everyone, that they can get. Sort real-style headlines onto the six threats, then read what the numbers say.
Triple Science · Higher tier
Start here
An empty shelf.
You go to buy bread and the shelf is bare. A week later it’s back, but it costs more than it did.
If you had to guess, is that more often because there are more people to feed, or because less food was grown?
Food security
Enough food, and people able to get it.
Food security is having enough food to feed a population. Producing enough is only half of it: the food also has to reach people, and they have to be able to afford it. Tap each part.
The six threats
Six things the specification lists as threats.
Each threat cuts how much food there is, or who can get it. Read the map, then file each headline under the threat it shows.
Headline 1 of 6
“Rains fail for a third year: harvest lost across the region”
Why meat needs so much more: biomass is lost at each trophic level, so feeding grain to animals gives far less food than eating the grain. That is taught with pyramids of biomass in 4.7.4.3.
Reading the numbers
Is food keeping up with people?
A made-up country, in round figures. Compare how each line changes, then choose what the data shows.
Which statement does the data support?
Think again · is it only biology?
“War and the price of fertiliser aren’t biology, so they don’t count.”
Your call
ChooseFarmers in a region can no longer afford fertiliser. Is that a threat to food security?
Sort
Threat, or help?
Place each change.
Tap a card, then tap the box it belongs in. Tap a placed card to take it back.
Command words in this lesson
- Describe
- Name the threat and what it does to food supply.
- Explain
- Threat, then why it means less food or less access.
- Evaluate
- Use the data, weigh it, and reach a judgement.
Key fact
Food security is having enough food to feed a population. Six things threaten it: birth rate, changing diets, new pests and pathogens, environmental change, the cost of agricultural inputs, and conflict.
Key note · AQA 4.7.5.1
Factors affecting food security
- Food security is having enough food to feed a population.
- Threats: increasing birth rate; changing diets in developed countries, so scarce food is transported around the world; new pests and pathogens; environmental change, such as failed rains causing famine; the cost of agricultural inputs; conflict affecting water or food.
- Meat needs far more land, water and grain, because biomass is lost at each trophic level.
- Population and food-production data show whether food is keeping up with people.
- Sustainable methods must be found to feed all people on Earth.
Photograph this card. Tomorrow, cover it and say each line first.
Previous and next
Connects to
Ask MrBadmus
Not sure why conflict counts as a threat?
The country in the data task is made up; its figures are round numbers for practice.