An Introduction to Food

1. An Introduction to Food

2. Section 1 What is food security and why is it difficult to attain?

3. Many people suffer from chronic health and malnutrition • Food security means having daily access to enough nutritious food to live an active and healthy life. • 1/6 people is not getting enough to eat, facing food insecurity —The root cause of food insecurity is poverty. • Other obstacles to food security are political upheaval, war, corruption, and bad weather, including prolonged drought, flooding, and heat waves.

4. Many people suffer from chronic health and malnutrition • To maintain good health and resist disease, individuals need fairly large amounts of macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats, and smaller amounts of micronutrients—vitamins and minerals. • 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 development of children.

5. Starving children collecting ants in Sudan, Africa

6. Many people do not get enough vitamins and minerals • Deficiency of one or more vitamins and minerals, usually vitamin A, iron, and iodine. • 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. • Lack of iron causes anemia which causes fatigue, makes infection more likely, and increases a woman’s chances of dying from hemorrhage in childbirth. • 1/5 people in the world suffers from iron deficiency.

7. Many people do not get enough vitamins and minerals • Chronic lack of iodine can cause stunted growth, mental retardation, and goiter. • Almost one-third of the world’s people do not get enough iodine in their food and water. • According to the FAO and the WHO, eliminating this serious health problem would cost the equivalent of only 2–3 cents per year for every person in the world.

8. Many people have health problems from eating too much • Overnutrition occurs when food energy intake exceeds energy use, causing excess body fat. • Face similar health problems as those under: lower life expectancy, greater susceptibility to disease and illness, and lower productivity and life quality. • 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. • About 68% of American adults are overweight and half of those people are obese. • 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. Empty Calories • Currently, many of the foods and beverages Americans eat and drink contain empty calories – calories from solid fats and/or added sugars. Solid fats and added sugars add calories to the food but few or no nutrients. For this reason, the calories from solid fats and added sugars in a food are often called empty calories. Learning more about solid fats and added sugars can help you make better food and drink choices. • Solid fats are fats that are solid at room temperature, like butter, beef fat, and shortening. Some solid fats are found naturally in foods. They can also be added when foods are processed by food companies or when they are prepared. • Added sugars are sugars and syrups that are added when foods or beverages are processed or prepared. • Cakes, cookies, pastries, and donuts (contain both solid fat and added sugars) • Sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, and fruit drinks (contain added sugars) • Cheese (contains solid fat) • Pizza (contains solid fat) • Ice cream (contains both solid fat and added sugars) • Sausages, hot dogs, bacon, and ribs (contain solid fat)

11. Section 2 How is food produced?

12. Food production has increased dramatically • About 10,000 years ago, humans began to shift from hunting for and gathering their food to growing it and raising animals for food and labor. • Today, three systems supply most of our food. • Croplands produce mostly grains. • Rangelands, pastures, and feedlots produce meat. • Fisheries and aquaculture provide us with seafood. • About 66% of the world’s people survive primarily by eating rice, wheat, and corn. • Only a few species of mammals and fish provide most of the world’s meat and seafood.

14. Food production has increased dramatically • Since 1960, there has been an increase in global food production from all three of the major food production systems because of technological advances. • Tractors, farm machinery and high-tech fishing equipment. • Irrigation. • Inorganic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, high-yield grain varieties, and industrialized production of livestock and fish.

15. Industrialized crop production relies on high-input monocultures • Agriculture used to grow crops can be divided roughly into two types: 1) 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. • Major goal of industrialized agriculture is to increase yield, the amount of food produced per unit of land. • Used on about 25% of the world’s cropland, mostly in more-developed countries, and produces about 80% of the world’s food.

16. Industrialized crop production relies on high-input monocultures • Plantation agriculture is a form of industrialized agriculture used primarily in tropical less-developed countries. • Grows cash crops such as bananas, soybeans, sugarcane, coffee, palm oil, and vegetables. • Crops are grown on large monoculture plantations, mostly for export to more-developed countries. • Modern industrialized agriculture violates the three principles of sustainability by relying heavily on fossil fuels, reducing natural and crop biodiversity, and neglecting the conservation and recycling of nutrients in topsoil.

17. Oil palm plantation – once covered with tropical rain forest

19. Traditional agriculture often relies on low-input polycultures 2) Traditional agricultureprovides about 20% of the world’s food crops on about 75% of its cultivated land, mostly in less-developed countries. • There are two main types of traditional agriculture. • 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. • 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.

20. Traditional agriculture often relies on low-input polycultures • Many traditional farmers grow several crops on the same plot simultaneously, a practice known as polyculture. • Crop diversity reduces the chance of losing most or all of the year’s food supply to pests, bad weather, and other misfortunes. • Crops mature at different times, provide food throughout the year, reduce the input of human labor, and keep the soil covered to reduce erosion from wind and water.

21. (Ms. Barber <3’s)Permaculture • Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more. • MODELED AFTER NATURE • Vertical Layers • The canopy: the tallest trees in the system. Large trees dominate but do not saturate the area, i.e. there exist patches barren of trees. • Understory layer: trees that usually grow less than 45' • Shrubs: a diverse layer that includes most berry bushes • Herbaceous: may be annuals, biennials or perennials; most annuals will fit into this layer • Soil surface: cover crops to retain soil and lessen erosion, along with green manures to add nutrients and organic matter to the soil, especially nitrogen • Rhizosphere: root crops including potatoes and other edible tubers • Vertical layer: climbers or vines, such as runner beans and lima beans (vine varieties)

22. Permaculture http://sustainableman.org/infobox/permaculture/

23. Traditional agriculture often relies on low-input polycultures • Lessens need for fertilizer and water, because root systems at different depths in the soil capture nutrients and moisture efficiently. • Insecticides and herbicides are rarely needed because multiple habitats are created for natural predators of crop-eating insects, and weeds have trouble competing with the multitude of crop plants. • On average, such low-input polyculture produces higher yields than does high-input monoculture.

24. A closer look at industrialized crop production • Farmers can produce more food by 1)increasing their land 2) increasing their yields per acre. • 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.

25. The Green Revolution • The Good… The term Green Revolution refers to the renovation of agricultural practices beginning in Mexico in the 1940s. Because of its success in producing more agricultural products there, Green Revolution technologies spread worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s, significantly increasing the amount of calories produced per acre of agriculture. • And the Bad… It has led to massive use of and reliance on fossil fuels, reduced genetic diversity, increased vulnerability to pests, soil erosion, water shortages, reduced soil fertility, micronutrient deficiencies, soil contamination, reduced availability of nutritious food crops for the local population, the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers from their land, rural impoverishment and increased tensions and conflicts. The beneficiaries have been the agrochemical industry, large petrochemical companies, manufacturers of agricultural machinery, dam builders and large landowners.

26. A closer look at industrialized crop production • Three steps of the green revolution: 1) Develop and plant monocultures of selectively bred or genetically engineered high-yield varieties of key crops such as rice, wheat, and corn. 2) Produce high yields by using large inputs of water and synthetic inorganic fertilizers, and pesticides. 3) Increase the number of crops grown per year on a plot of land through multiple croppinggrowing two or more crops in the same space in the same year

27. A closer look at industrialized crop production • 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 middle-income, less-developed countries such as India, China, and Brazil. • Producing more food on less land has helped to protect some biodiversity by preserving large areas of forests, grasslands, wetlands, and easily eroded mountain terrain that might otherwise be used for farming.

28. A closer look at industrialized crop production • Largely because of the two green revolutions, world grain production tripled between 1961 and 2009. • World Grain Usage • Consumption48% • Feed livestock and indirectly Consumed by people who eat meat and meat products35% • To make biofuels such as ethanol for cars and other vehicles17%

29. Growth in global grain production of wheat, corn, and rice between 1961-2010

30. A closer look at industrialized crop production • In the U.S., industrialized farming has evolved into agribusiness, as a small number of giant multinational corporations increasingly control the growing, processing, distribution, and sale of food in U.S. and global markets.

31. CHEAP FOOD!! STOP COMPLAINING!!! • 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.

32. Crossbreeding and genetic engineering produce varieties of crops and livestock • Crossbreeding through artificial selection has been used for centuries by farmers and scientists to develop genetically improved varieties of crops and livestock animals. • Such selective breeding in this first gene revolution has yielded amazing results; ancient ears of corn were about the size of your little finger, and wild tomatoes were once the size of grapes. • Typically takes 15 years or more to produce a commercially valuable new crop variety, and it can combine traits only from genetically similar species. • Typically, resulting varieties remain useful for only 5–10 years before pests and diseases reduce their efficacy.

33. Crossbreeding and genetic engineering produce varieties of crops and livestock • Modern scientists are creating a second gene revolution by using genetic engineering to develop genetically improved strains of crops and livestock. • Alters an organism’s genetic material through adding, deleting, or changing segments of its DNA to produce desirable traits or to eliminate undesirable ones (gene splicing); resulting organisms are called genetically modified organisms. • Developing a new crop variety through gene splicing is faster selective breeding, usually costs less, and allows for the insertion of genes from almost any other organism into crop cells.

34. Crossbreeding and genetic engineering produce varieties of crops and livestock • Currently, at least 70% of the food products on U.S. supermarket shelves contain some form of genetically engineered food or ingredients, but no law requires the labeling of GM products. • Certified organic food, which is labeled as makes no use of genetically modified seeds or ingredients. • Bioengineers plan to develop new GM varieties of crops that are resistant to heat, cold, herbicides, insect pests, parasites, viral diseases, drought, and salty or acidic soil. They also hope to develop crop plants that can grow faster and survive with little or no irrigation and with less fertilizer and pesticides.

35. GMO

38. What is a Genetically Modified Organism? • It involves the insertion of DNA from one organism into another OR modification of an organism’s DNA in order to achieve a desired trait. Suntory "blue" rose

39. How does this differ from Mendel and his peas? GM vs Selective Breeding Selective breeding • Slow • Imprecise • Modification of genes that naturally occur in the organism GM • Very fast • Precise • Can introduce genes into an organisms that would not naturally occur!

40. Genetic engineering vs agricultural breeding Artificial selection has influenced the genetic makeup of livestock and crops for thousands of years. Proponents of GM crops say GM foods are safe. Critics of GM foods say: Traditional breeding uses genes from the same species. Selective breeding deals with whole organisms, not just genes. In traditional breeding, genes come together on their own.

41. Some genetically modified foods Bt crops

42. Some genetically modified foods Soybean Roundup ready crops

43. Some genetically modified foods Golden rice

44. Some genetically modified foods Starlink corn

45. Some genetically modified foods AquAdvantage salmon

46. Common GM Foods Products • Corn • Canola • Potatoes • Tomatoes • Squash • Soybeans • Flax • Cottonseed oil • Sugarbeets List of GMO Products: http://www.shiftfrequency.com/comprehensive-list-of-gmo-products/

47. Common GM Foods http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/countrieswithbans.cfm

48. Genetically Modified Foods Experts say 60% to 70% of processed foods on U.S. grocery shelves have genetically modified ingredients. Common GM crops: • Soybeans • Corn • Cotton

49. Genetically modified crops and foods have advantages and disadvantages

50. Genetically Modified Foods Pros • Increased pest and disease resistance • Grow food in harsh climate • Make drugs