🛒 Consumer demand
Shoppers want variety, such as exotic fruit, and want to buy food all year round, even when it is out of season at home.
Food Supply and Demand » The Globalisation of Food
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Cambridge spec: 10.2.4, 10.2.5
- Why food now travels across the world to reach our plates
- The positive impacts of globalised food supplies
- The negative impacts, including food miles and cash crops
- How to use Kenyan green beans and flowers as an example
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Unlock This CourseFood from all over the world
Look in a supermarket in a high-income country (HIC). You can buy green beans, pineapples, rice and flowers that were grown thousands of kilometres away. This is the globalisation of food supplies. Food is grown in one country, processed in another and eaten in a third. Remember from earlier lessons that globalisation means countries are more connected and interdependent. This lesson applies that idea to food.
Key terms:
- Globalisation of food supplies: food being produced, traded and sold across the world rather than only locally.
- Out-of-season food: food sold when it cannot be grown locally at that time of year.
- Agribusiness: large companies that run farming, processing and selling of food as a business.
- Food miles: the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is eaten.
- Cash crop: a crop grown to be sold, often for export, rather than eaten by the farmer's family.
- Food crop: a crop grown mainly to feed local people.
Why food supplies have globalised
There are six main reasons. Some are about what people want and some are about how food is moved and sold.
💰 Rising incomes
As incomes rise in HICs and MICs, people can afford a wider range of imported food.
🚢 Cheaper transport
Refrigerated ships and aircraft keep food fresh. Containerisation (standard steel boxes, covered earlier) makes shipping faster and cheaper.
📝 Trade agreements
Deals between countries or trade blocs cut taxes and rules on imports, so trading food is easier.
🏢 Agribusiness TNCs
Transnational corporations (TNCs, covered earlier) own farms and processing plants in many countries and organise worldwide supply.
🏪 Supermarkets
Big supermarket chains buy in huge amounts from many countries so they can stock the same products all year.
Positive impacts
- Choice: consumers can buy a much wider range of food.
- Cheaper food: buying from places with low costs and large farms can lower prices.
- Year-round supply: when it is winter in one hemisphere it is summer in another, so shops are never short of fresh produce.
- Export income and jobs: farmers and workers in LICs and MICs earn money, and governments gain foreign currency from exports.
Negative impacts
- Food miles and carbon emissions: long journeys, especially by air, release carbon dioxide and add to climate change.
- Cash crops replacing food crops: land used for export crops cannot grow food for local people, which can raise local food prices.
- Water use in dry exporting countries: growing thirsty crops for export can drain rivers, lakes and groundwater in places where water is already short.
- TNC power and low prices: a few big buyers can force farmers to accept very low prices, so farmers and workers may earn little.
- Vulnerability to global price shocks: if world prices fall, export farmers lose income. If prices rise, poorer countries that import food struggle to afford it.
Example: Kenyan green beans and flowers
Kenya is an MIC in East Africa with a warm climate, so it can grow crops all year. It exports green beans and cut flowers to Europe, much of it by air, so they arrive fresh in the European winter. Supermarkets and agribusinesses help organise this trade.
| Type of impact | Positive | Negative |
|---|---|---|
| Social | Jobs for farm and packing workers | Some workers may be paid very little |
| Economic | Export earnings for farmers and the country, and year-round supply for shoppers abroad | Prices set by powerful buyers, and income can fall if demand drops |
| Environmental | Few clear environmental gains: the main benefits are social and economic | Heavy water use near lakes such as Lake Naivasha, plus emissions from air freight |
Think about scale
Local scale: a worker gains a wage but a nearby lake may fall. National scale: Kenya gains export income. Global scale: air freight adds to carbon emissions. Showing different scales earns marks when you evaluate.
Worked example
Question: Explain one way trade agreements have led to the globalisation of food.
Answer: Trade agreements reduce taxes and rules on imported food (1). This makes it cheaper and easier for countries to sell food abroad, so more food is traded across the world (1).
Common mistakes
Do not say all globalised food is bad. Give a gain and a cost, then judge. Do not write only "pollution": say that air freight adds carbon emissions. Remember that many cash crops, such as beans, are food, but they are grown to sell, so local people may not get it. Some, like flowers, are not food at all.
Exam-style question
Fig. 1.1 shows made-up data for a country exporting beans to HICs.
| Year | Bean exports (thousand tonnes) | Land used for food crops (thousand hectares) |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 20 | 500 |
| 2010 | 45 | 450 |
| 2020 | 80 | 380 |
(a) Identify the bean exports in 2010. [1 mark]
(b) Calculate the fall in land used for food crops from 2000 to 2020. [1 mark]
(c) Give two reasons why food supplies have globalised. [2 marks]
(d) Explain why cash crops can cause problems for local people. [3 marks]
(e) Assess the view that the globalisation of food supplies mainly benefits LICs and MICs. [6 marks]
Model answer
(a) 45 thousand tonnes (1).
(b) 500 − 380 = 120 thousand hectares (1).
(c) Cheaper refrigerated transport keeps food fresh over long distances (1). Consumers want variety and out-of-season food all year (1).
(d) Cash crops use land that could grow food for local people (1). Less local food means local food prices may rise (1). Farmers depend on world prices, so if prices fall their income falls and they may struggle to buy food (1).
(e) Levels-style answer, made up for practice: Level 1 (1 to 2 marks) lists a few impacts. Level 2 (3 to 4 marks) explains benefits and costs. Level 3 (5 to 6 marks) weighs both sides and reaches a supported judgement.
Level 3 answer: LICs and MICs gain export income and jobs, as in Kenya, where workers and farmers earn money from green beans and flowers (1). This money can pay for wages and services (1). However, powerful TNCs and supermarkets may push prices down, so farmers keep little of the profit (1). Cash crops can replace food crops, and heavy water use in dry areas harms the environment (1). Meanwhile HICs gain choice and cheaper food all year round (1). Overall, exporters do benefit, but the gains are shared unevenly and the costs fall on local people and the environment, so HICs and large companies benefit most (1).
Exam tip
For "assess", give one point for and one against, name an example such as Kenya, then end with a judgement that says who benefits most.