Will land loss lead to food shortages?

1. Will land loss lead to food
shortages?
Year 9 - Humanities

2. Last Lesson
• What are the main causes of the growing water
shortage?
• Food production.
• Growth of urban and industrial demand.
• Poor farming practices.
• Over-extraction.
• Poor management.

3. Learning Intentions (What you need to
know and be able to do)
• Challenges to food production, including land
and water degradation, shortage of fresh
water, competing land uses, and climate
change, for Australia and other areas of the
world

4. Key Terms
• desertification
• salinity
• Biofuels
• Jatropha
• marginal
• monoculture

5. Comparison of world population
growth and arable land per capita

6. Land degradation
The main forms of land degradation are:
• erosion by wind and water
• salinity
• pest invasion
• loss of biodiversity
• desertification.

7. Land degradation caused by
deforestation in Madagascar

8. Growing fuel
• changing food crops to fuel crops, so less food
is produced and crops have to be grown on
marginal land rather than arable land
• increasing prices, which makes staple foods
too expensive for people to purchase
• forcing disadvantaged groups, such as women
and the landless poor, to compete against the
might of the biofuel industry.

9. Growing Cites (Tehran 1985 – 2009)

10. Land grabs