Food Security and Farming: KS3 Geography Guide

Almost 800 million people go to bed hungry every night, yet the world produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet. Food insecurity is not simply a problem of supply — it is a problem of geography, inequality, and politics. Understanding where food is grown, how farming works, and why people go hungry is core to KS3 geography.

What is food security?

The United Nations defines food security as a situation in which all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food security rests on four pillars:

Availability: Is enough food being produced or imported to the area?

Access: Can people physically reach and afford food?

Utilisation: Is the food nutritious and can bodies absorb it effectively (closely linked to clean water and sanitation)?

Stability: Is the supply consistent over time, and not disrupted by weather, conflict, or economic shocks?

When any pillar fails, food insecurity results — ranging from mild (skipping meals) to severe (famine).

Where is food insecurity worst?

Food insecurity is starkly uneven across the globe. The worst-affected regions are in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, where a combination of drought, conflict, and poverty creates chronic hunger.

Specific hotspots include Yemen (conflict and blockades have left over 17 million people in acute food insecurity), South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (ongoing civil conflict destroying food systems), and Somalia and Ethiopia (drought compounded by conflict and economic collapse). The Sahel region — the semi-arid belt running from Senegal to Sudan just south of the Sahara — faces recurring crises linked to erratic rainfall and land degradation.

It is important not to oversimplify food insecurity as a purely lower-income country problem. Food insecurity exists in high-income countries too: food bank usage in the UK has risen sharply since 2010, and food deserts — urban areas with poor access to affordable fresh food — are a documented problem in British and American cities alike.

Types of farming

Farming — the deliberate cultivation of crops or rearing of livestock — takes many forms, shaped by climate, terrain, technology, and economics.

Farming type | Definition | Example location | Key characteristics | Advantages | Disadvantages
Subsistence | Growing food primarily for household consumption; little or no surplus sold | Nepal, sub-Saharan Africa | Small plots, low inputs, manual labour | Low cost; community-appropriate | Vulnerable to drought; no surplus income
Shifting cultivation | Clear forest, farm for 2–3 years, then move on | Amazon basin, parts of DRC | Low-input; land allowed to recover | Allows soil recovery; uses traditional knowledge | Pressure from population growth; deforestation risk
Intensive commercial | High inputs (fertiliser, machinery, irrigation) per unit area for maximum yield | Netherlands (horticulture), UK arable | Large capital investment; high yields | Very productive; feeds urban populations | Expensive; environmental pressures (nitrate runoff, habitat loss)
Extensive commercial | Large areas farmed with low inputs per unit area | Australian sheep stations, US Great Plains wheat | Mechanised, low labour costs | Cheap land; operates at large scale | Susceptible to drought; requires vast land areas
Organic | No synthetic fertilisers or pesticides; natural inputs only | UK, Germany, Scandinavia | Certified standards; biodiversity-friendly | Better for biodiversity; strong consumer demand | Lower yields; higher cost per unit

Intensive subsistence farming — such as paddy rice cultivation in South-East Asia (Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand) — is a distinct category worth noting: it involves very high inputs of human labour per unit area to produce the maximum possible yield from tiny plots, typically feeding large rural populations.

Causes of food insecurity

Food insecurity rarely has a single cause. Geographers organise causes into physical and human categories.

Physical causes:

Drought: Prolonged water shortages devastate crops and livestock. The Horn of Africa experienced its worst drought in 40 years in 2022, affecting 22 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

Flooding: Can destroy harvests and contaminate water supplies; Bangladesh is chronically vulnerable.

Pests and disease: The East African locust crisis of 2019–2020 saw swarms the size of cities devour crops across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia — the worst outbreak in 70 years.

Climate change: Is increasing the frequency and severity of all three of the above, whilst shifting agricultural zones poleward and reducing yields in already-warm tropical regions.

Human causes:

Conflict: Destroys crops, displaces farmers, cuts supply chains, and blocks humanitarian access. Yemen and South Sudan are tragic contemporary examples.

Poverty: Even where food is available, people may lack the income to buy it — this is an access failure, not an availability failure.

Land grabbing: Large-scale purchase or lease of farmland in lower-income countries by foreign corporations or governments, sometimes displacing local communities and redirecting production for export.

Food waste: Roughly one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted — enough, in theory, to feed all the world's hungry people several times over.

Biofuels: Growing crops such as maize or sugar cane for fuel rather than food competes for land and can push up food prices globally.

SEEP consequences of food insecurity

Social: Malnutrition causes stunting (impaired physical and cognitive development in children), increased vulnerability to disease, and falling school attendance. UNICEF estimated in 2023 that 148 million children under five were stunted globally as a direct result.

Economic: Malnourished populations are less productive, reducing national economic output. Countries spend scarce foreign exchange importing food. Healthcare costs associated with malnutrition — and with obesity, itself a form of malnutrition — place substantial burdens on health systems.

Environmental: Pressure to produce more food pushes farmers to clear forests, overgraze marginal land, and apply excessive fertiliser — causing deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. This can lock in a downward spiral where degraded land produces less food, increasing pressure to clear yet more land.

Political: High food prices are politically destabilising. The Arab Spring uprisings of 2010–2011 were partly triggered by soaring bread and staple food prices following a global wheat price spike. International food aid and price support mechanisms are major instruments of foreign policy.

Solutions to food insecurity

Solutions must address all four pillars of food security simultaneously.

Increasing yield: The Green Revolution of the 1960s–1970s developed high-yielding crop varieties that lifted hundreds of millions out of hunger in South Asia. Newer gene-editing techniques (CRISPR) offer drought-resistant and pest-resistant varieties for the next generation.

Reducing food waste: From improved cold-chain storage in lower-income countries to consumer behaviour change in wealthier ones.

Improving access: Direct cash transfers, school feeding programmes, and reducing trade barriers can improve access even where food is available but unaffordable.

Sustainable agriculture: Agroforestry, crop rotation, and low-input farming techniques maintain soil health long-term and reduce dependence on expensive inputs.

Frequently asked questions

What is the definition of food security, and what are its four pillars?

The UN defines food security as a state in which all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for an active and healthy life. The four pillars are availability (is food produced or imported?), access (can people afford and physically reach it?), utilisation (is it nutritious and properly absorbed?), and stability (is the supply consistent over time?). All four must be met simultaneously for genuine food security. Most food crises involve failure in access or stability, not total absence of food.

What is the difference between subsistence and commercial farming?

Subsistence farming produces food primarily to feed the farming household, with little or no surplus sold. It is common in lower-income countries with limited technology and capital — Nepal, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South-East Asia. Commercial farming produces crops or livestock for sale and profit. It ranges from small family farms in the UK to enormous agri-business operations in the USA and Australia. The key distinction is whether food is grown for survival or for sale.

Why does food insecurity occur in wealthy countries as well as poor ones?

Food insecurity is not only about whether food is produced — it is about access. Even in high-income countries like the UK, some people cannot afford adequate food due to poverty, unemployment, or inadequate benefits. Food deserts — areas with few affordable fresh-food retailers — affect parts of British cities. Food bank usage in the UK hit record levels in the early 2020s. This illustrates that the access pillar of food security can fail even where food is nationally abundant.

How does conflict cause food insecurity?

Conflict disrupts food systems at every stage. Farmers are killed or displaced, leaving crops unharvested. Supply routes — roads and ports — are destroyed or blockaded. Markets cease to function. Aid agencies are denied access. Displacement concentrates people in areas without functioning agriculture. Yemen is the most acute current example: blockades on the port of Hodeidah, through which 70% of Yemen's food imports passed, created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises by restricting supply rather than reducing global food production.

What are the main solutions to global food insecurity?

No single solution is sufficient; geographers think across scales. At the farm level: improved seeds, irrigation, and sustainable land management increase yields. At the national level: investment in rural infrastructure (roads, storage), reducing food waste, and land reform improve access and stability. At the global level: international trade agreements, emergency food aid, and the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) set targets and mobilise resources. Technology — from drought-resistant crops to precision farming — is increasingly part of the toolkit, but political will and resource redistribution remain the deeper challenges.

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