CHAPTER 10
FOOD, PRODUCTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Outline
10-1 What is food security and why is it difficult to attain?
A. Many people suffer from chronic health and malnutrition.
2. One of every six people in less-developed countries is not getting enough to eat, facing food
insecurity—living with chronic hunger and poor nutrition, which threatens their ability to lead
3. To maintain good health and resist disease, individuals need fairly large amounts of
4. People who cannot grow or buy enough food to meet their basic energy needs suffer from
chronic undernutrition, or hunger.
5. Many suffer from chronic malnutrition—a deficiency of protein and other key nutrients,
which weakens them, makes them more vulnerable to disease, and hinders the normal
6. Many people do not get enough vitamins and minerals.
a. Many people suffer from a deficiency of one or more vitamins and minerals, usually
vitamin A, iron, and iodine.
b. Some 250,000–500,000 children younger than age 6 go blind each year from a lack of
vitamin A, and within a year, more than half of them die.
the equivalent of only 2–3 cents per year for every person in the world.
B. Many people have health problems from eating too much.
2. People who are underfed and underweight and those who are overfed and overweight face
3. Globally about 925 million people have health problems because they do not get enough to
eat, and about 1.1 billion people face health problems from eating too much.
5. Obesity plays a role in four of the top ten causes of death in the United States—heart disease,
stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and some forms of cancer.
10-2 How is food produced?
2. Today, three systems supply most of our food.
3. About 66% of the world’s people survive primarily by eating three grain crops—rice, wheat,
4. Since 1960, there has been an increase in global food production from all three of the major
food production systems because of technological advances.
a. Tractors, farm machinery and high-tech fishing equipment.
B. Industrialized crop production relies on high-input monocultures.
1. Agriculture used to grow crops can be divided roughly into two types:
a. Industrialized agriculture, or high-input agriculture, uses heavy equipment and large
amounts of financial capital, fossil fuel, water, commercial inorganic fertilizers, and
pesticides to produce single crops, or monocultures.
i. Major goal of industrialized agriculture is to increase yield, the amount of food
produced per unit of land.
C. Traditional agriculture often relies on low-input polycultures.
1. Traditional agriculture provides about 20% of the world’s food crops on about 75% of its
cultivated land, mostly in less-developed countries.
2. There are two main types of traditional agriculture.
a. Traditional subsistence agriculture supplements energy from the sun with the labor of
humans and draft animals to produce enough crops for a farm family’s survival, with
little left over to sell or store as a reserve for hard times.
i. In traditional intensive agriculture, farmers increase their inputs of human and draft-
animal labor, animal manure for fertilizer, and water to obtain higher crop yields, some
of which can be sold for income.
b. Many traditional farmers grow several crops on the same plot simultaneously, a practice
known as polyculture.
i. Crop diversity reduces the chance of losing most or all of the year’s food supply to
Chapter 10: Food, Soil, and Pest Management
v. On average, such low-input polyculture produces higher yields than does high-input
monoculture
E. A closer look at industrialized crop production.
2. Since 1950, about 88% of the increase in global food production has come from using high-
input industrialized agriculture to increase yields in a process called the green revolution.
3. Three steps of the green revolution:
a. First, develop and plant monocultures of selectively bred or genetically engineered high-
and 1970.
5. A second green revolution has been taking place since 1967. Fast-growing varieties of rice
and wheat, specially bred for tropical and subtropical climates, have been introduced into
and 2009.
7. People directly consume about 48% of the world’s grain production. About 35% is used to
8. In the United States, industrialized farming has evolved into agribusiness, as a small number
10. Americans spend only about 13% of their disposable income on food, compared to the
percentages up to 50% that people in China and India and most other less-developed countries
have to pay for food.
D. SCIENCE FOCUS: Soil Is the Base of Life on Land.
1. Soil is a complex mixture of eroded rock, mineral nutrients, decaying organic matter, water,
air, and billions of living organisms, most of them microscopic decomposers.
3. Soil, on which all terrestrial life depends, is a key component of the earth’s natural capital. It
4. Most soils that have developed over a long period of time, called mature soils, contain
horizontal layers, or horizons.
6. In most mature soils, these two layers teem with bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and small
insects, all interacting in complex ways.
7. Porous mixture of the partially decomposed bodies of dead plants and animals, called humus,
8. The B horizon (subsoil) and the C horizon (parent material) contain most of a soil’s inorganic
10. Although topsoil is a renewable resource, it is renewed very slowly, which means it can be
depleted. Just 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) of topsoil can take hundreds of years to form, but it can
be washed or blown away in a matter of weeks or months when we plow grassland or clear a
forest and leave its topsoil unprotected.
H. Crossbreeding and genetic engineering produce varieties of crops and livestock.
1. Crossbreeding through artificial selection has been used for centuries by farmers and
scientists to develop genetically improved varieties of crops and livestock animals.
a. Such selective breeding in this first gene revolution has yielded amazing results;
2. Modern scientists are creating a second gene revolution by using genetic engineering to
develop genetically improved strains of crops and livestock animals.
a. Genetic engineering involves altering an organism’s genetic material through adding,
deleting, or changing segments of its DNA to produce desirable traits or to eliminate
undesirable ones—a process that is also called gene splicing; resulting organisms are
called genetically modified organisms.
b. Developing a new crop variety through gene splicing is faster selective breeding,
I. Meat production has grown steadily.
1. Meat and animal products such as eggs and milk are good sources of high-quality protein and
represent the world’s second major food-producing system.
3. Global meat production is likely to more than double again by 2050 as affluence rises and
4. About half of the world’s meat comes from livestock grazing on grass in unfenced rangelands
and enclosed pastures.
5. The other half is produced through an industrialized system in which animals are raised
6. Feedlots and CAFOs, and the animal wastes and runoff associated with them, create serious
environmental impacts on the air and water.
J. Fish and shellfish production have increased dramatically.
2. A fishery is a concentration of particular aquatic species suitable for commercial harvesting in
a given ocean area or inland body of water.
4. Fish and shellfish are also produced through aquaculture—the practice of raising marine and
5. Some fishery scientists warn that unless we reduce overfishing and ocean pollution, and slow
projected climate change, most of the world’s major commercial ocean fisheries could
collapse by 2050.
K. Industrialized food production requires huge inputs of energy
1. The industrialization of food production has been made possible by the availability of energy,
mostly from nonrenewable oil and natural gas
2. Energy is needed to run farm machinery, irrigate crops, and produce synthetic pesticides and
10-3 What environmental problems arise from industrialized food production?
1. Spectacular increases in the world’s food production since 1950. The bad news is the harmful
environmental effects associated with such production increases.
3. These environmental effects may limit future food production and make it unsustainable.
B. Topsoil erosion is a serious problem in parts of the world.
2. Erosion of topsoil has two major harmful effects.
a. Loss of soil fertility through depletion of plant nutrients in topsoil.
3. By removing vital plant nutrients from topsoil and adding excess plant nutrients to aquatic
systems, we degrade the topsoil and pollute the water, and thus alter the carbon, nitrogen, and
phosphorus cycles.
C. Drought and human activities are degrading drylands.
1. Desertification in arid and semiarid parts of the world threatens livestock and crop
contributions to the world’s food supply.
3. In its 2007 report on the Status of the World’s Forests, the FAO estimated that some 70% of
world’s arid and semiarid lands used for agriculture are degraded and threatened by
desertification.
D. Excessive irrigation has serious consequences.
1. Irrigation is important in boosting productivity of farms; the roughly 20% of the world’s
cropland that is irrigated produces about 45% of the world’s food.
3. Repeated annual applications of irrigation water in dry climates lead to the gradual
4. Severe salinization has reduced yields on at least 10% of the world’s irrigated cropland, and
5. Irrigation can cause waterlogging, in which water accumulates underground and gradually
6. Excessive irrigation contributes to depletion of groundwater and surface water supplies.
E. Agriculture contributes to air pollution and projected climate change.
2. They also account for more than 25% of the human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases.
3. Industrialized livestock production alone generates about 18% of the world’s greenhouse
4. Nitrous oxide, with about 300 times the warming capacity of CO2 per molecule, is released in
huge quantities by synthetic inorganic fertilizers as well as by livestock manure.
F. Food and biofuel production systems have caused major losses of biodiversity.
1. Natural biodiversity and some ecological services are threatened when forests are cleared and
3. In the United States, about 97% of the food plant varieties that were available to farmers in
4. The world’s genetic “library,” which is critical for increasing food yields, is rapidly shrinking.
G. There is controversy over genetically engineered foods.
2. Its producers and investors see GM food as a potentially sustainable way to solve world
hunger problems and improve human health.
3. Some critics consider it potentially dangerous “Frankenfood.”
a. Recognize the potential benefits of GM crops.
b. Warn that we know too little about the long-term potential harm to human health and
ecosystems from the widespread use of such crops.
4. CONNECTIONS: GM crops and organic food prices
a. The possible unintended spread of GM crop genes threatens the production of certified
organic crops, which must be grown in the absence of such genes.
H. There are limits to expansion of the green revolution.
5. Factors that have limited the current and future success of the green revolution include:
a. Without huge inputs of inorganic fertilizer, pesticides, and water, most green revolution
and genetically engineered crop varieties produce yields that are no higher (and are
sometimes lower) than those from traditional strains.
b. High inputs cost too much for most subsistence farmers in less-developed countries.
Chapter 10: Food, Soil, and Pest Management
f. Clearing tropical forests and irrigating arid land could more than double the area of the
world’s cropland, but much of this land has poor soil fertility, steep slopes, or both.
g. Cultivating such land usually is expensive, is unlikely to be sustainable, and reduces
biodiversity by degrading and destroying wildlife habitats
I. Industrialized meat production has harmful environmental consequences.
Producing meat by using feedlots and other confined animal production facilities increases
meat production, reduces overgrazing, and yields higher profits.
Such systems use large amounts of energy (mostly fossil fuels) and water and produce huge
amounts of animal waste that sometimes pollute surface water and groundwater and saturate
nitrogen and phosphorous from excessive inputs of synthetic fertilizers.
CONNECTIONS: Corn, Ethanol, and Ocean Dead Zones.
a. Huge amounts of inorganic fertilizers are used in the mid-western United States to
produce corn for animal feed and for conversion to ethanol fuel.
b. Much of this fertilizer runs off cropland, eventually goes into the Mississippi River,
The use of fossil fuels energy pollutes the air and water, and emits greenhouse gases.
Use of antibiotics is widespread in industrialized livestock production facilities.
a. 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are added to animal feed to prevent
the spread of diseases in crowded feedlots and CAFOs and to make the livestock
animals grow faster.
Animal waste produced by the American meat industry amounts to about 130 times the
amount of waste produced by the country’s human population.
J. Aquaculture can harm aquatic ecosystems.
Advantages of aquaculture:
a. High efficiency.
b. High yield in small volume of water.
Disadvantages:
a. Using fishmeal and fish oil to feed farmed fish can deplete populations of wild fish.
About 37% of the wild marine fish catch is used in the production of fish meal and fish
oil.
b. Fish such as farmed salmon raised on fishmeal or fish oil can be contaminated with long-
lived toxins such as PCBs and dioxins. Aquaculture producers contend that the
10-4 How can we protect crops from pests more sustainably?
A. Nature controls the populations of most pests.
1. A pest is any species that interferes with human welfare by competing with us for food,
3. In natural ecosystems and many polyculture agroecosystems, natural enemies (predators,
4. When we clear forests and grasslands, plant monoculture crops, and douse fields with
chemicals that kill pests, we upset many of these natural population checks and balances that
help to maintain biodiversity.
B. We use pesticides to help control pest populations.
1. Development of a variety of synthetic pesticides—chemicals used to kill or control
populations of organisms that we consider undesirable such as insects, weeds, rats, and mice.
3. Plants produce chemicals called biopesticides to ward off, deceive, or poison the insects and
herbivores that feed on them.
10–100 times more toxic than those used in the 1950s.
6. Broad-spectrum agents are toxic to many pests, but also to beneficial species. Examples are
7. Selective, or narrow spectrum, agents are effective against a narrowly defined group of
organisms. Examples are algaecides for algae and fungicides for fungi.
8. Pesticides vary in their persistence, the length of time they remain deadly in the environment.
a. DDT and related compounds remain in the environment for years and can be
9. In the United States, about 25% of pesticide use is on houses, gardens, lawns, parks, playing
11. See Individuals Matter: Rachel Carson.
C. Synthetic pesticides have several advantages.
1. Proponents contend that their benefits outweigh their harmful effects.
a. Save human lives. DDT and other insecticides probably have prevented the premature
deaths of at least 7 million people from insect-transmitted diseases such as malaria,
bubonic plague, and typhus.
b. Increase food supplies by reducing food losses from pests.
c. Can increase profits for farmers.
d. They work fast.
E. Synthetic pesticides have several disadvantages.
1. Opponents of widespread pesticide use believe that the harmful effects of these chemicals
outweigh their benefits.
a. Accelerate the development of genetic resistance to pesticides in pest organisms.
b. They can put farmers on a financial treadmill.
F. Pesticide use has not reduced U.S. crop losses to pests
2. Three conclusions from a study that evaluated data from more than 300 agricultural scientists
and economists:
3. The pesticide industry disputes these findings.
4. CASE STUDY: Ecological Surprises: The Law of Unintended Consequences.
a. In the 1950s, dieldrin (a DDT relative) was used to eliminate malaria in North Borneo.
This started an unexpected chain of negative effects.
b. Small insect-eating lizards that lived in the houses died after eating dieldrin-contaminated
Instructor’s Manual for Environmental Science, 15th edition
e. Ultimately, both malaria and the unexpected effects of the spraying program were
brought under control.
F. Laws and treaties can help to protect us from the harmful effects of pesticides.
1. In the United States, three U.S. federal agencies, the EPA, the USDA, and the Food and Drug
2. Under FIFRA, the EPA was supposed to assess the health risks of the active ingredients in
3. In 1996, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act, mostly because of growing
scientific evidence and citizen pressure concerning the effects of small amounts of pesticides
4. Between 1972 and 2010, the EPA used FIFRA to ban or severely restrict the use of 64 active
pesticide ingredients, including DDT and most other chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides.
5. As much as 98% of the potential risk of developing cancer from pesticide residues on food
6. CONNECTIONS: Pesticides and Organic Foods.
a. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), you could reduce your pesticide
intake by up to 90% by eating only organic versions of 12 types of fruits and vegetables
7. Banned or unregistered pesticides may be manufactured in one country and exported to other
countries.
8. In what environmental scientists call a circle of poison, or the boomerang effect, residues of
9. The wind can also carry persistent pesticides from one country to another.
10. In 1998, more than 50 countries developed an international treaty that requires exporting
11. In 2000, more than 100 countries developed an international agreement to ban or phase out
the use of 12 especially hazardous persistent organic pollutants. The United States has not
signed this international agreement.
G. There are alternatives to synthetic pesticides.
1. Many scientists believe we should greatly increase the use of biological, ecological, and other
alternative methods for controlling pests and diseases that affect crops and human health.
Here are some of these alternatives:
a. Fool the pest. A variety of cultivation practices can be used to fake out pests.
H. Integrated pest management is a component of more sustainable agriculture.
1. Many pest control experts and farmers believe the best way to control crop pests is a carefully
designed integrated pest management (IPM) program.
3. The overall aim of IPM is to reduce crop damage to an economically tolerable level.
4. Farmers first use biological methods (natural predators, parasites, and disease organisms) and
5. They apply small amounts of insecticides—mostly based on those naturally produced by
6. Broad-spectrum, long-lived pesticides are not used, and different chemicals are used
7. A well-designed IPM program can reduce synthetic pesticide use and pest control costs by
50–65%, without reducing crop yields and food quality.
9. Disadvantages of IPM:
a. It requires expert knowledge about each pest situation and takes more time than does
using conventional pesticides.
10. The USDA could promote IPM three ways:
a. First, add a 2% sales tax on synthetic pesticides and use the revenue to fund IPM research
and education.
10-5 How can we improve food security?
A. Use government policies to improve food production and security.
1. Agriculture is a financially risky business because farmers have a good or bad year depending
2. Governments use two main approaches to influence food production:
3. To improve food security, some analysts urge governments to establish special programs
focused on saving children from the harmful health effects of poverty.
10-6 How can we produce food more sustainably?
A. Reduce soil erosion.
1. Soil conservation involves using a variety of ways to reduce soil erosion and restore soil
fertility, mostly by keeping the soil covered with vegetation.
2. Some of the methods farmers can use to reduce soil erosion:
a. Terracing and contour planting are ways to grow food on steep slopes without depleting
topsoil.
b. Strip cropping involves planting alternating strips of a row crop (such as corn or cotton)
and another crop that completely covers the soil, called a cover crop (such as alfalfa,
clover, rye, or a grass-legume mixture).
3. Soil erosion in the United States.
a. A third of the country’s original topsoil is gone and much of the rest is degraded.
b. In 1935, the United States passed the Soil Erosion Act, which established the Soil
4. CONNECTIONS: Corn, Ethanol, and Soil Conservation.
a. In recent years, some U.S. farmers have been taking erodible land out of the conservation
reserve in order to receive generous government subsidies for planting corn (which
removes nitrogen from the soil) to make ethanol for use as a motor vehicle fuel.
B. Restore soil fertility.
2. Organic fertilizer from plant and animal materials.
a. Animal manure: the dung and urine of cattle, horses, poultry, and other farm animals
3. Organic agriculture uses only organic fertilizers and crop rotation to replenish the nutrients.
4. Synthetic inorganic fertilizers are usually inorganic compounds that contain nitrogen,
phosphorus, and potassium.
a. Inorganic fertilizer use has grown more than 900% since 1950, and it now accounts for
about one-fourth of the world’s crop yield.
C. Reduce soil salinization and desertification.
1. One way to prevent and deal with soil salinization is to reduce the amount of water that is put
onto crop fields through use of modern efficient irrigation.
d. Drip, or trickle irrigation, also called microirrigation, is the most efficient way to deliver
2. Reducing desertification is not easy because we can’t control the timing and location of
prolonged droughts caused by changes in weather patterns.
3. We can reduce population growth, overgrazing, deforestation, and destructive forms of
4. Work to decrease the human contribution to projected climate change, which is expected to
increase severe and prolonged droughts in larger areas of the world during this century.
5. Restore land suffering from desertification by planting trees.
D. Practice more sustainable aquaculture.
1. Open-ocean aquaculture.
3. Polyaquaculture operations raise fish or shrimp along with algae, seaweeds, and shellfish in
coastal lagoons, ponds, and tanks.
E. Produce meat more efficiently and eat less meat.
1. Meat production and consumption account for the largest contribution to the ecological
footprints of most individuals in affluent nations.
2. If everyone in the world today was on the average U.S. meat-based diet, the current annual
3. More sustainable meat production and consumption involves shifting from less grain-efficient
4. Eating less meat by having one meatless day per week.
6. Replace meat with a balanced vegetarian diet.
F. Shift to more sustainable food production.
2. Industrialized agriculture produces large amounts of food at reasonable prices, but is
unsustainable because it:
a. Relies heavily on fossil fuels.
3. More sustainable, low-input agriculture has a number of major components.
a. Organic farming.
i. Sharply reduces the harmful environmental effects of industrialized farming
and our exposure to pesticide residues.
ii. Encourages more humane treatment of animals used for food and is a more
economically just system for farm workers and farmers.
b. Organic polyculture.
i. A diversity of organic crops is grown on the same plot. For example, a
diversified organic vegetable farm may grow forty or more different crops
on one piece of land.
c. Shift from using imported fossil fuel to relying more on solar energy for food production.
4. SCIENCE FOCUS: The Land Institute and Perennial Polyculture.
Instructor’s Manual for Environmental Science, 15th edition
a. Over 3 decades ago, plant geneticist Wes Jackson co-founded The Land Institute in the
U.S. state of Kansas which uses natural systems agriculture to grow a polyculture of
edible perennial plants to supplement traditional annual monoculture crops and to help
reduce the latter’s harmful environmental effects.
b. Benefits of this approach include:
i. No need to till the soil and replant seeds each year. This reduces topsoil
erosion and water pollution from eroded sediment, because the unplowed
topsoil is not exposed to wind and rain.
5. CONNECTIONS: Corn, Ethanol, and Food Riots
a. Some call for ending U.S. government subsidies for growing corn to make ethanol fuel
for cars and for returning about one-fourth of all U.S. cropland to food production.
6. Five major strategies to help farmers and consumers make the transition to more sustainable
agriculture:
a. First, greatly increase research on more sustainable organic farming and perennial
polyculture, and on improving human nutrition.
b. Second, establish education and training programs in more sustainable agriculture for
G. Buy locally grown food, grow more food locally, and cut food waste.
1. Increase sustainability by buying more of our food locally or at least regionally grown, in
other words “becoming a locavore.”
2. Participate in community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs in which they buy shares of
3. People can plant gardens and raise chickens in suburban backyards.
4. In cities, they grow food in vacant lots, on rooftops, in window boxes, and in raised beds in
unused or partially used parking lots (a growing practice known as asphalt gardening).
6. Chapter’s three big ideas:
a. About 925 million people have health problems because they do not get enough to eat
and 1.1 billion people face health problems from eating too much.
b. Modern industrialized agriculture has a greater harmful impact on the environment than
10-1 What is food security and why is it difficult to attain?
Concept 10-1A Many people in less-developed countries have health problems from not getting
enough food, while many people in more-developed countries suffer health problems from eating too
much.
Concept 10-1B The greatest obstacles to providing enough food for everyone are poverty, war, bad
weather, climate change, and the harmful environmental effects of industrialized food production..
1. Define food security. Note the main cause of food insecurity. Define malnutrition, chronic
10-2 How is food produced?
Concept 10-2 We have used high-input industrialized agriculture and lower-input traditional
agriculture to greatly increase food supplies.
1. List the three systems that supply most of our food. Describe the trends in world food production
2. Describe the two green revolutions. Note the limitations of the green revolution. Note other ways
of maintaining and increasing food production.
3. Define soil. Describe how soil is formed, causes of soil depletion and the rate of soil replacement.
5. Distinguish traditional meat production from industrialized meat production. Describe the current
6. Describe trends in the world fish catch since 1950. Assess the potential for increasing the annual
7. Describe the energy requirements of industrialized food production.
10–3 What environmental problems arise from industrialized food production?
Concept 10-3 Future food production may be limited by soil erosion and degradation, desertification,
irrigation water shortages, air and water pollution, climate change, and loss of biodiversity.
1. Describe the problems of topsoil soil erosion, soil degradation, and desertification. Describe the
2. Describe how agriculture contributes to air pollution and projected climate change.
3. Describe major losses in biodiversity caused by food and biofuel production. Define
agrobiodiversity.
5. Describe limitations to expansion of the green revolution. List harmful environmental effects of
10-4 How can we protect crops from pests more sustainably?
Concept 10–4 We can sharply cut pesticide use without decreasing crop yields by using a mix of
cultivation techniques, biological pest controls, and small amounts of selected chemical pesticides as a
last resort (integrated pest management).
1. Define pests and pesticide, and list five types of pesticides. Distinguish between broad-spectrum
2. Discuss the contribution of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring to the modern environmental
movement in the United States.
3. Note that target insects can become resistant to pesticides. Define integrated pest management
10-5 How can we improve food security?
Concept 10–5 We can improve food security by reducing poverty and chronic malnutrition, producing
food more sustainably, relying more on locally grown food, and cutting food waste.
10-6 How can we produce food more sustainably?
Concept 10-6 We can produce food more sustainably by using resources more efficiently, sharply
decreasing the harmful environmental effects of industrialized food production, and eliminating
government subsidies that promote such harmful impacts.
1. List ways to reduce soil erosion and to restore soil fertility. Describe soil erosion in the United
2. List ways to reduce soil salinization and desertification.
3. Note approaches to mitigating the harmful effects of modern agriculture. Explain sustainable
4. Describe ways to produce meat more efficiently and the effects of eating less meat.
5. Describe the effects of buying locally grown food and cutting food waste.
Key Terms
agrobiodiveristy
animal manure
aquaculture fish farming
chronic malnutrition
chronic undernutrition hunger
compost
desertification
industrialized high-input
agriculture
integrated pest management
IPM
malnutrition
organic agriculture
organic fertilizer
scientific principles of
sustainability
soil conservation
soil erosion
soil salinization
synthetic inorganic fertilizer
topsoil
Teaching Tips
Instructors can bring students’ attention to the fact that the efforts of science and those of government policy do
not always work together synergistically.
• The Core Case Study indicates that modern food production methods are unsustainable. Does this
represent an example of the failings of the green revolution?
Chapter 10: Food, Soil, and Pest Management
• Ask students to think of food products they are uncomfortable with that their government has allowed
on the market. Are they concerned about pesticides on their food? Do they routinely wash produce
before eating it?
• Ask them if they buy organic food. Why or why not?
Local farming:
• Ask students to bring in pictures of their own gardens or yards. Discuss how they take care of the soil.
Ask about their composting, fertilizing, and pest control techniques.
Discussion Topics
1. What are the different agricultural systems and their history of development? Use a few of the following
2. What environmental impacts occur from traditional and industrial agricultural practices and how could
organic farming help improve sustainability?
3. How do food distribution, environmental conditions, and politics play a role in the history of great famines?
What is the best way to manage food distribution for foreign aid?
role?
5. What are the benefits and the detriments of pesticides? Discuss pesticides as hazardous waste; pesticide
hazards to agricultural workers; chlorinated hydrocarbons; organophosphates and carbonates; pyrethroids
and rotenoids; biological amplification of persistent pesticides; DDT and malaria control; Agent Orange;
6. What are alternatives to pesticide? How does integrated pest management (IPM) work?
7. How have regulations shaped our agricultural practices? Include Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and
8. What is the relationship between the soil quality, the climate, and food production/quality?
Activities and Projects
1. Have your students locate and bring to class photographs, paintings, or history passages describing the
effects of hunger and starvation.