Chapter 7: Food + Agriculture

Where is the richest savanna in the world?

Have food supplies kept up with the increasing human numbers of the past two centuries?

Nearly 60 percent of residents of developing countries were this, meaning their diet didn't provide the 2,200 calories per day.

The ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-to-day basis.

What is the greatest threat to food security?

Large-scale food shortages, massive starvation, social disruption and economic chaor.

What country has the largest number of hungry people in the world?

Famines usually trigger what?

Has a democratic country with a relatively free press ever had a famine?

A nutritional imbalance caused by a lack of specific dietary components or an inability to absorb or utilize essential nutrients.

Seriously overweight

The most common nutritional problem in the world. Low hemoglobin levels in the blood, usually caused by iron deficiency.

A protein condition that occurs mainly in young children who eat mostly cheap, starchy foods and don't get enough good quality protein.

Protein deficiency caused by a diet low in both caolories and protein. Child suffering from this is usually thin and shriveled.

Name the three crops humans depend on for the majority of its nutrients.

Where is meat consumption growing rapidly?

More than half of all antibiotics used in the US are administered to what?

A complex mixture of weathered rock material, partially decomposed organic molecules, and a host of living organisms.

A layer of soil beneath the topsoil that has lower organic content and highger concentrations of fine mineral particles.

The first true layer of soil; organic material is mixed with mineral particles.

Layers of soil that reveal uch about the soil's history and usefulness.

Water flowing across a gently sloping, bare field removes a thin, uniform layer of soil in what is known as...

When little rivulets of running water gather together and cut small channels in the soil, this process is called...

If rills enlarge to form bigger channels or ravines that are too large to be removed by normal tillage operations, we call this process...

Conversion of productive land to a desert.

Water saturation of soil that fills all the air spaces and causes plant roots to die from lack of oxygen.

Mineral salts accumulate in soil. This is often a problem when irrigation water dissolves and mobilizes salts in the soil

Dramatically increased agricultural production brought about by "miracle" strains of grain.

Splicing a gene from one organism into the chromosome of another

Organisms created by combining natural or synthetic genes using the techniques of molecular biology

People who blindly oppose any new technology.

Aims to produce food and fiber on a sustainable basis and repair the damage caused by destructive practices.

Plants grown under a canopy of taller trees, such as coffee.

Plowing across the hill rather than up and down, can reduce water runoff.

The planting of different kinds of crops in alternating strips along the land contours.

Shaping the land to create level shelves of earth to hold water and soil

Plants that grow for more than two years.

A general term for a protective groundcover that includes manure, wood chips, straw, seaweed leaves and other natural products.

Involves reducing the number of times a farmer disturbs the soil by plowing.

Farming uses a coulter, which slices through the soil and opens up a slot just wide enough to insert seeds.

Planting is accomplished by drilling seeds into the ground directly through mulch and groundcover.

Sutainable farming using ecological knowledge.