Chapter Questions
Describe the differences between subsistence and modern agriculture. What are the major components of the agricultural revolution? What are the environmental costs of each?
What is the Green Revolution? What have been its limitations and its gains?
How do sustainable animal farming and industrial-style animal farming affect the environment on different scales?
What are biofuels, and what are their impacts on food production?
What are the major advantages and problems associated with using biotechnology in food production?
Describe the patterns in grain trade between different world regions over the past 70 years. How do the food crisis of 2006-2008 and food shortages of 2010-2011 relate to these patterns?
Describe the levels of responsibility for food security. At each level, list several ways food security can be improved.
Define hunger, malnutrition, and undernourishment. What is the extent of these problems in the world? What is their root cause?
Discuss the causes of famine, severe hunger, and chronic malnutrition, and name the geographical areas most threatened by them.
How is relief from famine and severe hunger accomplished? Why does food aid sometimes aggravate poverty and hunger?
Define sustainability in an agricultural context. In what ways is modern industrial agriculture unsustainable?
What are at least four cutting-edge concepts in sustainable agriculture?