🌾 Health problems
Undernutrition means not getting enough food or the right nutrients. In children it can cause stunting, which means being too short for their age, and it can slow brain development. Weak, hungry people catch disease more easily.
Challenges of Food Supply » Threats to Food Supply and Food Insecurity
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Cambridge spec: 10.3.1, 10.3.2
- The natural and human factors that reduce food supply
- What food security and food insecurity mean
- The problems food insecurity causes in LICs and HICs
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Unlock This CourseWhat can go wrong with food supply?
Growing food is a risky business. A farm needs the right weather, healthy soil, money and peace. If any one of these fails, less food reaches people's plates. The factors that cut food supply are either natural (nature causes them) or human (people cause them).
Key terms:
- Pest: an animal or insect that damages crops or livestock, such as locusts.
- Land grabbing: when large companies or governments buy or lease big areas of land, often from local farmers, usually in poorer countries.
- Food security: when all people, at all times, have access to enough safe and nutritious food to live a healthy life.
- Food insecurity: when people do not have reliable access to enough safe and nutritious food.
Natural factors
🌵 Drought
Too little rain means crops wither and animals die. Drought in the Horn of Africa between about 2020 and 2023 left millions of people short of food.
🌊 Floods
Floods wash away crops, drown animals and spoil stored grain. Salt water or silt can also leave fields unusable for a time.
🌀 Tropical storms
Strong winds and heavy rain flatten crops, destroy farm buildings and damage roads, so food cannot be moved.
🦟 Pests and disease
Swarms of locusts can strip fields bare in hours. A big desert locust outbreak hit Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia in 2019 and 2020. Crop diseases and animal diseases also cut harvests.
🌡️ Climate change
Changing temperatures and rainfall make some regions drier, hotter or less predictable, so farmers cannot rely on the seasons they know.
🌿 Poor soils
Thin, stony or low-nutrient soils give low yields, however hard farmers work.
Human factors
| Human factor | How it reduces food supply |
|---|---|
| Conflict | Farmers flee, fields are damaged or burned, and roads and markets are cut off. Conflict is a major cause of hunger in places such as South Sudan and Somalia. |
| Poverty | Farmers cannot afford seeds, fertiliser or tools, so yields stay low. |
| Lack of technology | Without irrigation, machines or storage, farmers depend on the rain and lose food to rot and pests. |
| Land grabbing | Local people lose their farmland, so they can no longer grow food for themselves or their community. |
| Cash crops | Good land is used for crops to sell abroad instead of food for local people. |
| Soil erosion from overgrazing | Too many animals eat the plant cover. Wind and rain then carry the bare soil away and the land grows less. |
| Rising food prices | Poorer families cannot afford enough food, even when food exists in the shops. |
| Waste | Food is lost on farms and in storage, or thrown away in shops and homes, so less is available to eat. |
| Biofuels | Land and crops such as maize and sugar cane are used for fuel, not food, which can push food prices up. |
Many of these factors work together. A drought can cut harvests, which pushes up prices, which makes poor families hungrier still.
Food security and food insecurity
A person is food secure when they can always get enough safe, healthy food. They are food insecure when they cannot. Food insecurity is not only about whether food exists. It is about whether people can get it, by growing it or by paying for it.
Think about it
A country can have plenty of food in its markets and still have food insecurity. A family with no income cannot buy any of it.
Problems caused by food insecurity
⚠️ Famine
A famine is an extreme shortage of food in an area, leading to widespread hunger and many deaths. Somalia suffered a famine in 2011.
💰 Rising prices and social unrest
When food gets scarce, prices rise. In 2008 high food prices led to protests and riots in several countries, including Haiti and Egypt. Anger over food is a cause of social unrest.
🧳 Migration
People who cannot find food may leave their homes to look for it, moving to cities or to other countries. This puts pressure on the places they move to.
Food insecurity in LICs and HICs
The problems look different at different levels of development.
| Level of development | Typical problems |
|---|---|
| LICs | Undernutrition, stunting and disease; famine; rising prices; social unrest; migration; and poor school attendance, because hungry children cannot concentrate, are ill more often, or are kept at home to work for food. |
| HICs | Food poverty: people on low incomes cannot afford enough healthy food. Many rely on food banks, which are charities that give free food parcels to people in need. |
Food insecurity in an HIC is usually about money, not about a shortage of food in the shops.
Worked example
Question: Explain how conflict can lead to food insecurity.
Answer: Conflict forces farmers to leave their land, so crops are not planted or harvested (1). Roads and markets are destroyed, so food cannot be moved to people who need it (1). Prices then rise, so families cannot afford what is left (1).
Common mistakes
Saying food insecurity only happens in LICs. HICs have food poverty and food banks. Another slip is saying "there is not enough food" when the real problem is that people cannot afford or reach it. Finally, remember that a factor must be linked to its effect on food, such as "drought means crops fail", not just named.
Exam-style question
Fig. 1.1 shows a made-up food summary for Country X in a bad year.
| Cause of lost harvest | Share of lost harvest (%) |
|---|---|
| Drought | 50 |
| Locusts | 30 |
| Conflict | 20 |
(a) Identify the natural factor that caused most of the lost harvest. [1 mark]
(b) Define food insecurity. [2 marks]
(c) Explain how rising food prices can cause problems for people in an LIC. [3 marks]
(d) Discuss the problems caused by food insecurity in LICs and HICs. [6 marks]
Model answer
(a) Drought (1).
(b) Food insecurity is when people do not have reliable access (1) to enough safe and nutritious food (1).
(c) Poor families spend most of their income on food, so they can afford less (1). Children become undernourished and ill (1). Hungry people may protest, causing social unrest (1).
(d) Level 3 (5-6): In LICs, food insecurity causes undernutrition, stunting and disease because children do not get the nutrients they need to grow. In severe cases it leads to famine and many deaths. Children may miss school because they are weak or have to work, which harms their future. Rising prices can cause social unrest and make people migrate to find food. In HICs the problem is food poverty. Low-income families cannot afford enough healthy food, so they use food banks. The problems differ because in LICs people can face hunger, famine and disease when they cannot grow or buy enough food, while in HICs the problem is mainly low incomes and food poverty.
Exam tip
For a "Discuss" question, cover both LICs and HICs and show how they differ. The word "discuss" asks for more than a list.