Famine

Made By : Sajal Jain

Class : 9 B
Roll No,: 32
Submitted to-
Miss Chandravati
Farming can be classified according to …
1. Specialisation – what kind of products are produced
2. Its economic status
3. How intensively it uses the land
4. Land tenure – how it holds/uses land
Farming can be classified according to …
1. Specialisation – what kind of products are
produced
 Farms that produce mainly field crops such as
rice, or wheat or soya or sugar are called arable
 Farms that mostly rear animals are called
pastoral e.g. Sheep farms in Wales, cattle in
Australia
 Farms that do both are called mixed farms.
 Horticulture is the production of fruit,
vegetables, mushrooms and ornamental plants,
can be seen as a farming activity, which is
becoming increasingly international, e.g. flowers
from Kenya and salad leaves from Holland
Farming can be classified according to …
2.Its economic status
 Nearly all MEDC farms produce goods for sale –
they aim is to make a profit. They are commercial
enterprises. There are also commercial
plantations and ranches in LEDCs which supply
us with coffee and their cities with meat.
 However in many parts of LEDCs, the farms are
essentially there to produce enough food to feed
the families that live on them. This is called a
subsistence economy. Most will aim to produce
some goods for sale so that they can afford things
they cannot produce for themselves, like clothing
or to pay for their children’s schooling.
3. How intensively it uses the land
 Where a lot is produced in a small area, then it is called
intensive production. Examples of this include rice
paddies and market gardening (horticulture). Where
you get a high level of outputs, there is invariably a
high level of inputs in terms or labour, chemicals and
equipment
 Where the soil is poor and little can be produced, such
as sheep farming in the hills, you have few inputs in
terms of labour and few outputs per hectare. This is
extensive production.
 Farming can be classified according to …
4. Land tenure – how the farmer holds/uses land
 The vast majority of farmers in modern times rent or own a
piece of ground which they work throughout their lives. They
are said be sedentary.
 However there are still cultivators and pastoralists that move
around. These are said to practice a nomadic or shifting
existence.
 Nomads are pastoralists who follow their herds in seasonal
fashion e.g. reindeer herds in northern Europe and Asia.
 Shifting cultivators take over a pieces of ground, usually in
tropical forests, cut down and burn the tress, plant their crops
and stay only as long as the soil is productive – then they move
on every 3 – 7 years.
 Sufficient food is essential but many people do not
have enough
Textbook
page 60
Shows a
slightly
different
view – it is
worth a look

 Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo,

Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea,
Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,
 Asia: Russia, N. Korea, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan
Europe: Bosnia
Middle East: Iraq, Syria, Tajikistan, Jordan
South America: Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras
Oceania: Papua New Guinea
 What do we need? Calories

34 -3700

31 -3400

28 -3100

25 -2800

22 -2500

19 -2200

< 1900

• All the darkest browns are in trouble –

• < 2300 is not good!
But remember some people have too much food.
What are the effects?
Too much – as you see in many MEDCs – and there
are increasing problems with obesity.
This means that there are increasing numbers of
stokes and heart disease.
It could be, that unlike in the past, where life
expectancy increases every decade, that for MEDCs it
might start to go down, because too many people eat
too much of the wrong sort of food – and not enough
of the right sort.
 What are the effects of too few calories?
 In many African nations, people only managed to
consume about 80% of their required calories (around
1800 calories a day).
 A lack of calories and the right vitamins cause
malnutrition, making people weak and sick.
 Many people get illnesses that make them too sick to
work. This leads to a cycle of hunger
The Cycle of Hunger
 What are the causes of famine?
• Some people believe that it is mostly down to
laziness or ignorance.
• But it is usually a complex mix of one or more of
the following:
• Draught – when the rains fail
• Desertification – when trees are cut down, which
changes the local climate, turning an area that
did support agriculture into a semi-desert
• Poverty and/or landlessness – if the last harvest
was bad, they have to eat their seed so they
have nothing left to plant
 More causes of famine
• Wars – the farmers often have to leave their homes to
save their lives. So they cannot plant their crops.

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 More causes of famine
• Trade – LEDCs get low prices for their cash
crops but have to pay high prices for the goods
they do not make and have to import.

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 More causes of famine
• International debt – poor countries who have had
to borrow money spend a lot on ‘servicing the
debt’ – in other words making their interest
payments – so there is little left to invest in
farming.

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 The global food crisis
• The phrase on everyone’s mind this
summer.
• What caused it?
• Most people concentrated on biofuels as
being the main problem.
• Land was turned over to palm oil, wheat
production, sugar production.
• But that was not the whole problem.
The global food crisis
Droughts in major wheat-producing countries in
2005-06 ( e.g. in Australia, a very large producer, has
almost total crop failure)
So there were low grain reserves
High oil prices – this pushed up the price of running
machines, shipping goods and of course fertilizer
A doubling of per-capita meat consumption in some
developing countries – and do you know how much
grain it takes to make a kilo of beef? The figures vary
but most say about 11kg of grain!
Why a Green Revolution?
 The world's worst recorded food disaster happened in 1943 in British-ruled
India.
 Known as the Bengal Famine, an estimated four million people died of
hunger that year alone in eastern India (that included today's Bangladesh).
 The initial theory put forward to 'explain' that catastrophe was that there as
an acute shortfall in food production in the area.
 But it was also due to hoarding – the Second World War was in full swing
and western governments were worried about having enough food. So the
merchants were storing it away in the hope of getting a higher price later.
 When the British left India four years later in 1947, India, haunted by
memories of the Bengal Famine, put food security high on its list of things
that needed to be sorted out.
 This led to:
 the Green Revolution in India and,
 legislative measures preventing businessmen from hoarding food for profit.
 It applied to the period from 1967 to 1978.
 Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self-sufficiency
were not entirely successful. They did expand the area being
farmed. But starvation deaths still happened. So further change
was needed
 The term "Green Revolution" is a general one that is applied to
successful agricultural experiments in many Third World
countries. It is NOT specific to India. But it was most successful in
India.
 What was the Green Revolution in India?
 There were three basic elements in the method of the Green
Revolution:
 (1) Continued expansion of farming areas;
 (2) Double-cropping existing farmland;
 (3) Using seeds with improved genetics.
 Double-cropping was a primary feature of the Green Revolution.
Instead of one crop season per year, the decision was made to have
two crop seasons per year. The one-season-per-year practice was
based on the fact that there is only natural monsoon per year. This
was correct. So, there had to be two "monsoons" per year. One
would be the natural monsoon and the other an artificial
'monsoon.'
 The artificial monsoon came in the form of huge irrigation
facilities. Dams were built to arrest large volumes of natural
monsoon water which were earlier being wasted.
 Also new strains of high yield value (HYV) seeds,
seeds mainly wheat
and rice but also millet and corn were developed.
 Dr. M.P. Singh was regarded as the hero of India's Green
revolution as he was the major scientists behind the development
of HYVs.
 What did the Green revolution achieve?
 (1) The Green Revolution resulted in a record grain output of 131
million tons in 1978-79. This established India as one of the
world's biggest agricultural producers. No other country in the
world which attempted the Green Revolution recorded such level
of success. India also became an exporter of food grains around
that time.
 (2) Yield per unit of farmland improved by more than 30 per cent
between 1947 (when India gained political independence) and
1979 when the Green Revolution was considered to have delivered
its goods.
 (3) The crop area under HYV varieties grew from seven per cent
to 22 per cent of the total cultivated area during the 10 years of the
Green Revolution. More than 70 per cent of the wheat crop area,
35 per cent of the rice crop area and 20 per cent of the millet and
corn crop area, used the HYV seeds.
 Economic results of the Green Revolution
 (1) Crop areas under high-yield varieties needed more
water, more fertilizer, more pesticides, fungicides and
certain other chemicals. This new local industry
created new jobs and contributed to the country's
GDP.
 (2) More reservoirs needed more dams that were used
to make hydro-electric power. This in turn boosted
industrial growth, created jobs and improved the
quality of life of the people in villages.
 (3) India paid back all loans it had taken from the
World Bank and others to fund the Green Revolution.
This improved India's creditworthiness.
 (4) Some developed countries, especially Canada,
which were facing a shortage in agricultural labour,
invited Indian farmers experienced in the methods of
the Green Revolution, because the Green Revolution
had been so successful. (That's why Canada today has
many Punjabi-speaking citizens of Indian origin).
 With more machinery there was more rural
unemployment and so there was an increase in rural to
urban migration
 Rural Poverty – only the larger, richer farmers could
afford the HYV seeds, the fertilizer and the pesticides
need to ensure the HYV seeds performed well.
 Heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides damaged water
courses.
 Some of the reservoirs were built on fertile land,
displacing the farmers who used to live there
 Frequent irrigation led to a build-up of salts in the
soil, making it less fertile.
 Where as Asia and Mexico and South America have all
increased the amount of food they produce, Africa has,
if anything, gone backwards.
 There has been little investment – that has been left to
NGOs who have tried small sustainable local projects,
which have done a lot of good but only in a small way.
 Now there is talk of a Green Revolution for Africa – and
there is a lot of discussion about how this should be
achieved
 GM producers are champing at the bit – saying that
they and only they have the solution.
 Other look at the first Green Revolution and say
specialist seeds and fertilizer and high tech is not the
way to go.

http://lindym.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/organi
c-farming-could-feed-africa/
 An analysis of 114 projects in 24
African countries found that
yields had more than doubled
where organic, or near-organic
practices had been used. That
increase in yield jumped to 128
per cent in east Africa. The study
found that organic practices
outperformed traditional
methods and chemical-intensive
conventional farming. It also
found strong environmental
benefits such as improved soil
fertility, better retention of water
and resistance to drought.
 Due to the lack of the time the project was
not made successfully.(as good animations
are not part of the ppt.)
 Sorry For the Inconvenience made by me.

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