1. Food miles: Advantage
or disadvantage?
What we are learning today:
1. To be able to explain what food miles are.
2. To describe the global advantages and
disadvantages of importing food.
Why we are learning this:
• To independently decide whether you agree or
disagree with importing food.
• Understand that many controversial issues can
be interpreted in different ways.
2. What I know
already.
What I want
to know.
What I have
learnt.
Stick this table into your books and
complete the first two columns that last will
be filled in at the end.
3. Starter:
With the items you have been given find out the origin (where they are
from) and label them onto the world map with the help of an atlas.
Tea from
India
Tomatoes
from Spain.
4. Food and their origin
Cashew nuts - India
Chocolate – Ivory Coast
Mangoes – Malaysia
Oranges – Spain
Brazil nuts – Brazil
Kiwi fruit – New Zealand
Bananas – Costa Rica
Sugar snap peas – Kenya
Wine – South Africa
Apples – France
Strawberries – Israel
Coffee - Columbia
5. What can you remember about…
Development
• What types of jobs do
people in LEDCs
have?
• What is trade, how
can it improve
development?
Global Warming
• What causes it?
• What are the effects?
60 seconds
Write as much as you
can remember
6. Copy the sentences into your book filling in the blanks.
Food miles are the measure of the ____________ a food travels from
field to plate. This travel adds substantially to the ___________
___________ emissions that are contributing to ____________
change. ____________ per cent of the fruit and half of the
vegetables in the UK are __________. The amount of food being
_________ into the UK ____________ in the 1990s and is predicted
to rise further each year. Consumers are also directly responsible
for increased food miles. We now travel further for our shopping and
use the ______ more often to do it.
Missing words:
Ninety-five flown climate
distance imported car carbon
dioxide doubled
7. Sort the cards into the advantages and disadvantages
of food miles.
Advantages Disadvantages
8. We use the money from
producing our crops for both
our children to be in primary
school and to build a new home
and put in electricity.
By importing food we generate
large amounts of CO2 causing
global warming. The countries that
will be most effected are those we
import from. Many African
countries will have drought and not
be able to farm any more.
Producing this food has
transformed communities.
Now young people want to
stay in farming because there
is money and a future in it.
They can have smart phones
and good clothes by living
here not in a city.
9. What do Europeans want –
to see us all stay in
poverty, to come to Europe
looking for jobs? By
exporting these crops we
can earn more and invest
in better lives and future
developments.
By travelling by car to supermarkets
we are contributing to global warming
so in the future many areas may
become flooded while others become
desertified.
10. The direct social,
environmental, and
economic costs of food
transport are estimated
at over £9 billion each
year.
Our farming contributes little to global
warming. We use people to weed
fields not tractors. I wonder whether
stopping the export of out produce to
Europe would stop the planes flying
and whether that would really reduce
the carbon emissions?
Food transported across the
world burns up a lot of fossil
fuel and contributes to
global warming.
11. What do you think?
• Should we import our food from abroad.
Give a reason for your answer.
• Complete the last column in your table:
What I have learnt.
