Lesson video

This lesson is called Factors Affecting Human Food Security, and Possible Solutions, and is from the unit Maintaining Biodiversity and Human Impacts.

Hi there, my name's Mrs. McCready, and I'm here to guide you through today's lesson.

So thank you very much for joining me today.

In our lesson today, we're going to describe a number of factors which affect human food security, and then we're gonna have a look at biotechnological, agricultural, and domestic approaches which will improve human food security.

Now in our lesson today, we're gonna come across a number of keywords, and they're listed up here on the screen for you now.

You may wish to pause the video and make a note of them, but I will introduce them to you as we come across them.

So in our lesson today, we're going to start off by looking at factors which affect human food security, before we consider bio technological responses to that problem, and then look at other ways in which we can improve human food security.

So are you ready to go? I certainly am.

Let's get started.

So what is food security? Well, human food security is about having enough food to feed every human on the planet with a balanced diet.

Now you'll know about a balanced diet, where we've looked at a nutritional plate and seen how it's divided into areas such as carbohydrates, proteins, dairy products, like milks and cheeses, and other types of food.

So a balanced diet is one that contains a little bit of everything in it, all to the right levels so that we live long and healthy lives.

Now, it's important that every person on the planet has access to a balanced diet, but unfortunately this is not true for many, many millions of people across the globe.

And where food security is not present, people often end up suffering from malnutrition, diseases, and may even die from the fact that they do not have access to a balanced and healthy diet.

And the United Nations estimates that across every single country across the world, there are nine million people who die of hunger, malnutrition, and essentially, therefore, food security issues every year, 9 million people.

So food security is a very present problem that we are trying to deal with as a planet.

Now, there are lots of different factors which affect food security around the world, and not all of those factors will be present in every community where food security is an issue.

Now those factors include an increasing human population, the changing diets of developed countries, the movement and increase of pests and pathogens, environmental changes, including those being driven by climate change, the cost of providing food, the impact that conflicts have on the availability of food, and the sustainability of food production.

So what is meant by the term food security? I'll give you five seconds to think about it.

Okay, so you should have chosen b.

The term food security means having enough food to feed every human with a balanced diet.

Well done if you got that.

So let's have a look at the various different factors which reduce food security and see why they are problematic.

So let's firstly consider an increasing human population.

So you can see on the graph there on the screen how the human population has been building exponentially over the last couple of hundred years or so.

And certainly since after the second World War, there has been a population explosion on the planet, and the number of people now living on Earth has passed 9 billion people.

That is an incredible number, especially when you consider back in 1800, there were only 1 billion humans living on Earth.

Now this population increase has occurred mainly because in many less developed countries across the world, the birth rate is increasing rapidly.

And as the human population continues to grow, this threatens food security, because there are more people to feed and not necessarily any more food with which to feed them.

Let's have a look at changing diets.

So diets are changing because people in developed countries, such as those in the West, the UK, and Europe for instance, and America, people in those countries eating more foods from around the world than they have ever done previously.

Now that means that those people have a much wider variety of food to eat, if you just consider when you go into the supermarket or the vast range of food that we can access from around the world.

And some of those items are actually imported from around the world.

You just have to look in the fruit and veg section to see that.

Now, that's great for the people who are living in those countries.

We have a much wider variety of food to eat.

However, those foods have to be transported here and often over very, very long distances.

And the problem with that is not only are there great numbers of air miles associated with that food, it also deprives the communities who are supplying us with that food with their own food, because less is available to them, and often that food becomes much more expensive for them to buy because it has retail value elsewhere in the world.

So if we look at quinoa in a little bit more detail, this is food which is supplied from South America, and you can see from the back of this packet that this portion of quinoa has come from Peru.

Now quinoa is a staple food in South America.

It's an excellent source of protein and it is readily grown over in those countries.

However, it is now being exported regularly to the USA and also to Europe, which means that the consumption of quinoa locally in the regions of South America, which used to eat plenty of quinoa, has declined, and instead they are now eating more pasta.

So their diet has changed as well.

Unfortunately for them though, pasta is less nutritious than quinoa and also may well have been imported and therefore have many air miles associated with it too, which increases emissions.

This reduces food security for the local populations within South America because those local communities are now no longer eating the food that they are growing.

Instead, they are sending it off to other parts of the world for other people to eat, which means that instead of them eating the food that they have grown, they're having to buy food instead, which increases the cost to them.

And all of that, that movement of food around the world, the reduction of food availability to the people who are living in the places where they're growing the food, and the fact that they have to rely on food which is brought in from elsewhere, all reduces food security for the local populations.

So which of these threaten food security? I'll give you five seconds to consider.

Well, hopefully you have said that changing diets in developed countries and an increase in the human population both threaten food security.

Well done if you chose options b and c.

So let's now consider new pests and diseases, or pathogens, and how these impact our farmed animals and crops.

Now the problem with new pests and diseases being introduced into an area where they wouldn't normally be found is that the local populations of those plants and animals don't have any resistance to those diseases and therefore often succumb to them very quickly.

But why are they being introduced in the first place? Well, that's because human travel is spreading diseases around the globe.

Now we saw that with the pandemic, how the Covid virus got transmitted across the globe through human travel.

And the same is very true for pests and diseases which affect animals and plants as well.

Added to that, climate change, which is changes to global weather patterns and includes global warming, which is an increase in the average global temperature, has also resulted in a change in the distribution of some organisms that spread diseases.

Blue tongue is an example of this.

Blue tongue is a virus which is spread by midges via cattle.

And cattle succumb to blue tongue virus when they are bitten by midges.

And midges are spreading because in part due to climate change.

Environmental changes are also happening largely due to climate change.

Now, the IPCC states that climate change is already having a huge impact on food security, and this is because of the increase in either the number of droughts or floods, both of which cause damage to crops and animals to die.

And therefore climate change has a significant impact on human food security, because if crops fail, then the harvest fails and humans aren't able to produce enough food.

This is becoming an increasing problem because of climate change.

And as the climate continues to alter and worsen, these problems will simply become more severe and more frequent.

The cost of producing food is also an increasing worry, especially to food producers such as farmers, because modern farming uses many different types of machinery, all of which require fuel.

They also uses a wide variety of fertilisers and pesticides, plus irrigation systems, all of which are designed to increase yield.

However, all of these cost money and therefore have to be paid for.

Now, genetic engineering has produced a number of crops that are tolerant to drought or pests and diseases, but these genetically engineered seeds are expensive to produce and therefore cost more money to buy.

And cost therefore impacts human food security, because if farmers can't afford to pay for them or if they're passing on those costs to the consumers and they can't afford to buy them, then there's an issue in the availability of food to people.

An increasing number of conflicts also causes significant impact on food security, because just the presence of war and conflicts within an area impacts food security negatively.

It's very difficult to farm land when a war is going on around you, because often, water pipes and other infrastructure gets damaged, roads get destroyed or barricaded off and are unable to be passed.

The cost of obtaining fuel and fertilisers increases because these are required for war efforts rather than for farming.

And ultimately, obviously the area is much less secure and therefore much less able to be farmed generally, even if these other things weren't happening.

Also, even after a war has finished, there's often contaminated land with landmines or other nasty chemicals and the side effects or the leftovers of war.

And all of these reduce the ability for land to produce food and for farmers to farm effectively as well.

So why does a very high level of rainfall, or precipitation, threaten food security? I'll give you five seconds to consider.

So you should have chosen c, that flooding may cause plants to die.

Well done if you did.

So what I'd like you to do now is summarise the factors which affect human food security by firstly looking at the graph.

And you can see how this graph is representing how food consumption of quinoa has changed over a period of about 15 years.

And the graph shows how production, export, and local consumption has changed between 1995 and 2010.

And what I'd like you to do is to describe what the graph shows and link this to human food security.

So pause the video and come back to me when you're ready.

Okay, let's see what you have written.

So you might have included that quinoa production has increased slightly and that since the year 2000, there has been a significant increase in the export of quinoa.

At the same time, the local consumption of quinoa has declined.

And as exports have increased, there is less food available locally, and this decreases the food security of the local population.

And food security may also reduce as the local population has to rely on buying foods such as pasta, which is less nutritious than quinoa, rather than growing it for themselves.

So just check over your answer and make sure you've got all those salient points.

And well done.

Okay, now let's move on to look at biotechnological responses in food production.

So biotechnology is the field of biology which alters and uses organisms to produce products for human use.

So for instance, soybeans can be genetically engineered to withstand different conditions.

And genetic engineering is just one example of biotechnology.

So genetic engineering involves modifying the genome, the genetic material of an organism, so that it can withstand different conditions, for instance, withstand higher or lower temperatures, for example.

And various different forms of biotechnology, including genetic engineering, are used in agriculture because they improve food security.

Now, genetically modified crops have often increased yield, which is ultimately what we want.

We want more product out of the crop than we have had previously.

And this happens, this increase in yield happens because the GM crops are either resistant to environmental conditions such as drought or excessive rainfall, or they are able to make their own pesticides to prevent being eaten by pests, or they have a bigger yield, just generally speaking, they make more produce that can be harvested, or those crops that are being harvested have more nutritional value within them and therefore are more nutritious and have a greater yield.

So if we consider GM potatoes, for instance, GM potatoes have more starch in them, and are resistant to pests and therefore have a greater yield because of the increase in nutritional value, and also are able to withstand a number of pests and diseases which their older predecessors were unable to.

So genetically modified crops, whilst often having received bad press, actually have many great benefits to them, especially when we're considering food security.

So what about this then? Some tomato plants have been genetically modified using a gene from a fish that lives in very cold seas.

So how would the tomato plants with this gene be useful in modern agriculture, do you think? I'll give you five seconds to decide.

Okay, so hopefully you chose b.

The tomato plant will produce high yields in colder temperatures.

Well done.

Now, genetic engineering comes under great scrutiny because when it's used to alter crops, it poses many significant ethical decisions that scientists and the public have to grapple with.

Now when we're thinking about ethical decisions, we're talking about whether something is right or wrong, and what the implications of our decision might be, and whether the good things about that decision outweigh or justify the solution given the negative implications that it has.

Now there are lots of pros and cons for the ethics of genetically engineered crops.

Some of the benefits include that genetic engineering can modify crops to make them more resistant to drought or disease.

So this means that they don't have to have so much pesticide or irrigation to keep them alive.

Another benefit of genetically engineered crops might be that because the crops can be modified to be resistant to disease, they produce high yields.

And this is great because we want more crop out of our crop, but we also want to have to use less pesticide in order to keep our crops alive, and therefore we've got quite a significant benefit there.

And also that crops which have been genetically modified can produce their own pesticides.

And again, this is about reducing the requirement for putting other chemicals onto the crops and that they're more able to just survive themselves.

However, do these benefits outweigh the risks, some of which might be that the genes from modified crops could get into the environment and spread to wild plants, creating super weeds, which would reduce crop yield because the weeds would take over the farmer's field very quickly instead, or that crops that are modified to reduce their own pesticides could lead to the evolution of pests which are themselves resistant to those pesticides, and then essentially we're back to square one, but we've now got super pests which are resistant to these genetically modified crops.

So there are benefits with genetically engineered crops and there are also risks, but which one outweighs the other? What do you think? Why do you think what you think? They're very difficult decisions to make and very difficult also to perhaps explain your reasoning.

So consider this then.

Which of the following is an advantage of growing GM maize crops to provide food? I'll give you five seconds to consider.

Okay, so hopefully you've decided that an advantage of growing GM maize crops is that less pesticide will be needed to grow the crop.

Well done if you spotted that.

There are other forms of biotechnology that can be used as well.

And these can be used to grow microorganisms rather than plants.

And microorganisms can then be used to make food.

So you might have come across a form of this if you've ever eaten mycoprotein, which is a meat substitute.

Mycoprotein is quite commonly and easily available and has been for many, many years, 40 or more years, and it's produced by a fungus called Fusarium.

And it's a protein that is produced by this fungus and is turned into human food.

Now the fungus grows very quickly in a cheap glucose syrup.

So the glucose syrup is the food.

And the food is put into a large fermenter along with the fungus.

Oxygen is bubbled through the fermenter to provide oxygen for the fungus to use so that it can digest the food, the glucose syrup, using aerobic respiration.

And the optimum conditions of temperature and nutrient quantity are maintained so that the fungus can grow as quickly as possible.

So if we look at the diagram there, we can see that in the cream space, that's where the fungus culture and the sugar solution is put.

And oxygen is pumped in from the bottom.

Around the outside of the tank, of the fermenter, is an insulating jacket.

And cold water is pumped in, and it cools the fermenter to maintain a steady temperature.

And then as that water warms up as it's cooling the fermenter, it's then pumped out as warm water at the top to maintain an optimal temperature.

In addition to that, we have a probe coming in at the top to monitor the conditions.

There's also a motor at the top which turns, and spins, and stirs, and this mixes the oxygen through the system.

At the end of this production process, the protein that is produced by the fungus is removed from the bottom of the fermenter.

Now this is really, really useful because the fungus can double their biomass in five hours.

And what happens to this biomass is that it is then harvested, as you saw, it's drained out the bottom of the fermenter, and then it's purified in order to produce mycoprotein.

And because it's produced so rapidly and because the basic components of this process are cheap, the glucose syrup and the fungus, that it is a very cheap way of producing nutritious food which is suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

And because it's very cheap and because it's very quick, it's therefore very sustainable.

And so this is a good way of improving human food security.

So what is mycoprotein made from? I'll give you five seconds to consider.

Okay, so you should have said that mycoprotein is made from fungus.

Well done if you chose that.

So what I'd like you to do now is to summarise this section of the lesson.

You can see there the image of the fermenter, which is used to grow the fungus Fusarium.

So what I'd like you to do is to state what is the main food source of the fungus, why is oxygen pumped into the fermenter, and explain why there is a water cooled jacket around the fermenter.

So pause the video and come back to me when you're ready.

Okay, let's see what you've written.

So firstly I asked you what is the main food source of the fungus.

And you should have said that that is glucose syrup.

It is cheap and it is easily used by the fungus to provide energy for life processes.

Then I asked you to explain why oxygen is pumped into the fermenter.

And you should have said that this allows the fungus to respire aerobically with oxygen.

Then I asked you to explain why there is a water-cooled jacket around the fermenter.

And you should have said that the jacket maintains the temperature of the fermenter at the optimum temperature for the fungus to grow quickly.

And this means that the fungus will produce a high yield in a short time, which means that more food will be provided, and this will ultimately increase food security.

Well done if you've got all of those points.

Okay, let's move on to our last section of the lesson, which is about other ways to improve food security.

So we've seen how biotechnological responses are able to improve food security, but there are other solutions available.

And this is necessary because climate change is causing more droughts and more floods, both of which will decrease food security and therefore we need to combat it.

So reducing climate change will improve food security.

Now food production causes up to 37% of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

So obviously, producing food is a critical way of targeting and tackling climate change.

But what are these non-technological solutions I keep saying about and how will they reduce climate change and increase food security? Well, farmers and food producers can reduce crop and livestock emissions.

We also need to harvest the ability for the soil and biomass to store carbon out of the atmosphere.

And then consumers such as us can reduce the amount of food waste that we produce.

We can eat a more healthy and sustainable diet.

And both of these will reduce climate change and improve food security along the way.

So what about these in more detail then? How do crop emissions contribute to climate change and how can they be reduced? Well, crop emissions come from two things, deforestation in order to convert land for growing crops and also the use of things like fertilisers and pesticides, because the production of those chemicals causes significant carbon emissions.

So in order to reduce crop emissions, farmers can grow crops that are resistant to certain pests and that will therefore reduce their requirement to use pesticides on their crops.

They could also use farming techniques such as crop rotation, which will improve soil conditions naturally without fertilisers because of the range of plants which are being grown annually on the ground.

Another thing that farmers can do is to grow crops at slightly different times of the year so that they cope better with local conditions.

Now that's quite difficult perhaps to predict because weather patterns are not as predictable as they have been in the past.

So there are a number of different processes and methods that farming and food production manufacturers can use to increase food security.

I also said about reducing livestock emissions.

Now cows are the most pollutant of all the animals, because when they digest grass, they produce an enormous amount of methane.

They burp an enormous amount of methane.

And this is because of the bacterial processes that are going on inside their ruminating stomachs in order to digest the grass down into more nutritious substances.

Also, in order to keep livestock healthy, just like we have, they also get many antibiotics and vaccinations to keep them healthy.

And the production of antibiotics and vaccinations produces a lot of carbon emissions.

They're quite hard to make and require a lot of energy in order to do so.

Then the process of turning animals into food that we eat in itself uses a lot of energy and therefore produces great quantities of greenhouse gases.

And so if we can tackle these three significant areas, then we will improve climate change and food security.

Now we can do that by farming animals more sustainably and with good welfare so that they are happier, and healthier, and living in less cramped conditions, which will require fewer antibiotics and fewer vaccinations.

We can also change the type of foods that we eat and therefore the types of foods that are grown and farmed by, for instance, eating less meat.

And in fact, eating less beef, that in itself is the biggest change that consumers can make to reduce climate impact.

I also said about the ability for the soil and biomass to store carbon out of the atmosphere.

Nearly three times the amount of carbon that is stored in the atmosphere is stored in soil.

And so making sure that soil is healthy is really important.

And we can improve soil quality by converting farmland to grassland or woodland.

But this will obviously remove that farmland from farming and therefore reduce land availability, which is in itself a problem.

But if we grow a more diverse range of crops across the same farm site, then there will be a reduction in the number of diseases that will spread through the crops and also an improvement to the soil quality as well.

So growing crops which are more suitable for the conditions that they are being grown in will mean that fewer fertilisers and pesticides will be needed.

And all of these processes will improve food security.

So which non-technological methods can be used by farmers to improve food security? I'll give you five seconds to consider.

Okay, so you should have chosen that using crop rotation instead of fertilisers and rearing animals with good welfare standards to reduce the need for medication to prevent disease are both non-technological methods that can be used by farmers to improve food security.

But growing fewer crops is not an option.

In fact, what you should be doing is growing a greater variety of crops.

And using pesticides will not be beneficial either.

Well done if you spotted all of those.

Now I said about farmers and food producers, but also, there's a consumer element here as well.

And there are things that we can do at home very easily to improve food security and reduce our impact on climate change.

And one of the greatest things that we can do is to reduce food waste, so how much food we put directly in the bin before we've eaten it.

Now, in 2018, the UK produced about nine and a half million tonnes of food waste, which is the equivalent of 15 billion meals.

That's nearly two meals per every person on the planet.

Now the problem with that is that when food is thrown away, it decomposes using microorganisms, and they release the carbon that is stored in the food back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Now, we would've done that as part of our digestive processes when we ate the food, but instead of eating that food, we've eaten other food and allowed microorganisms to eat the food we've thrown away, and so increasing the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere through respiration.

So we can reduce the amount of food that we throw away by some very simple and straightforward processes.

Firstly, we can plan before we go and buy food so that we only buy the food that we need.

Also, we can manage the food that we do have at home much better by making sure that we check and keep an eye on use-by dates so that we don't throw away food unnecessarily.

And lastly, we can use up any leftovers more carefully so that there aren't leftovers.

They are used up instead.

Another thing I said we could do was to eat a more healthy and sustainable diet.

Now this is good for us because a healthy and sustainable diet will improve our health and make us live more happily and healthily for longer.

And we've seen how farming and manufacturing foods releases great quantities of greenhouse gases in the process of doing so because of the mechanised nature that we have over producing food.

Now, a diet that has a low impact on climate change includes foods that release the lowest quantity of greenhouse gases during production.

And they also happen to be the healthiest foods that we could eat.

So the most healthy and sustainable foods include grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and pulses.

And these are all the healthiest foods and also those which have the least impact on climate change as well.

So a healthy diet should have plenty of nuts, beans, and pulses, fruit and veg, and grains.

But they also should be low in animal-sourced foods such as meat, fish, seafood, eggs, and milk products, and should be low also in ultra-processed foods and drinks.

So just think about the food that you've had to eat today so far.

Has it been ultra-processed? Has it been high in meat, and eggs, and cheese products, or has it been high in nuts, beans, and pulses, fruit and veg, and grains? And where could you make changes to your diet? Because, ultimately, actually, if we eat less meat, that in itself will have quite a positive impact on climate change and will also improve food security.

So which of these are ways that we can reduce the impact that our food consumption has on climate change and food security? What do you think? So ways that we can reduce our impact on climate change and food security through our food consumption are to plan our meals more carefully and to eat more nuts and beans, not meat, and to eat less ultra-processed foods and drinks.

Did you spot all of those? Well done if you did.

So for our final task in our lesson today, what I'd like you to do is to consider this scenario.

A farming family are having a discussion over dinner about how they could improve their farm's productivity and sustainability.

Now you're a member of that family and you have recently learned about this in school.

In fact, you've been learning about it in the last 20 minutes or so.

So what I'd like you to do is to suggest some non-technological methods that the family uses, both from a farming perspective and also from a family and domestic perspective, and suggest why these approaches would be useful.

So pause the video and come back to me when you're ready.

Okay, let's see what you've written.

So I asked you to state some non-technological methods that you would suggest.

So you might have suggested that as a farming family, we grow crops which are resistant to pests or difficult growing conditions such as drought or flood, that we diversify and increase the range of crops being grown and use crop rotation to keep the soil in good condition, that we reduce the number of livestock farmed and improve their welfare standards.

And then as a family, we could create less food waste by planning our meals better.

We could eat fewer meat products and less ultra-processed food.

And we could eat more fruit and vegetables, seeds, beans, and pulses.

So did you get all of those points? Well done if you did.

And just add to your answer if you need to.

Okay, we've come to the end of our lesson today, and I hope you've enjoyed it.

We've seen today that as the population increases, there is a need to provide enough food to feed all humans on Earth with a balanced diet.

And if we achieve this, everyone will have food security.

Now, there are plenty of factors which affect food security, including changing diets, the prevalence of pests and diseases, costs, conflict, climate change, and sustainability.

Now, biotechnology can be used to help provide food security, including using genetic engineering to improve crop yield and the nutritional value of foods that are grown, and using microorganisms to produce food such as mycoprotein.

The benefits of biotechnology must be weighed against the risks of using them, plus the costs and the ethical issues.

And these lead to some complex considerations and difficult questions.

And finally, there are other ways to improve food security, such as sustainable production and the use of food, all of which will limit climate change.

So I hope you've enjoyed our lesson today.

Thank you very much for joining me.

And I hope to see you again soon.

Bye.