MEDCs and LEDCs: Food Distribution

In many MEDCs, the cost of staple food items is relatively cheap, and most people make purchases based in taste and preference. Produce seasonality has mostly disappeared due to globalization, and this has allowed for greater international variety in most supermarkets.

In LEDCs, staple food may not be always affordable as prices fluctuate. People tend to make purchases based on nutritional need and affordability. Political and economic agendas can affect food production: cash croppingEven if food crops are not used as cash crops, food production is still impacted since arable land is being occupied all the same.

In MEDCs the average caloric content per capita per day of food is 3314 calories. In the USA specifically, this number is 3374 calories.

In LEDCs the average caloric content per capita per day of food is 2666 calories. In Eritrea this number is 1512 calories.

What does the following table tell you about your diet?

                                              MEDC       LEDC
Meat                                      12.9           7.3
Fish and seafood                        1.4            0.9
Cereals                                   37.3          56.1
Vegetables, fruits, fats               48.4          35.7

Think globally
The American Association for the Advancement of Science suggests that there is an average of 2790 calories available each day for every human on the planet. That is enough to feed everyone. If food production has kept up with population growth, why are there still so many problems with famine, hunger and malnutrition?

Factors to consider
Distribution: If countries like Canada, USA and Australia have an excess of food, can that be shipped to Bangladesh, Ethiopia, or Sudan? Who will pay for it? Do they even want that kind of food?
Politics: If excess food is not paid for, is the receiving country now in the debt of the donating country or the donating corporation?

So far, food supply has kept pace with human population growth, seemingly refuting Malthus, however recently some are doubting this can continue.
As we adapt an increasing amount of global NPP to human needs. use and degrade more land, eat more meat, contaminate more water, we are getting closer to the planet's K... we just don't know that this is yet.
There are 1.1 billion people living in poverty... They are increasing and growing hungrier.
Annual grain yields per hectare have slowed their rate of increase since the Green Revolution (1990-2000 had the lowest increase since before the 1950s).

Types of farming systems
1) Subsistence: Food for farmers and their community, little or no surplus, little technology.
2) Commercial: Lar profit generating scale, yields are maximized, monocultures, high levels of technology, energy and medical input.

Farming can also be
1) Extensive - More land with lower density of animals.
2) Intensive - Intense use of land, higher inputs and outputs.
Also as pastoral, arable or mixed

(Worksheet) Food, Nutrition and Production.

Food Security is the situation in which people in a determinate area has daily access to enough nutritious food to have a healthy life. Food security also depends on reducing (at least slightly) the harmful environment effects of agriculture at local, national and global levels. 

In order to maintain good health, the human body needs macronutrients, micronutrients and minerals. People suffer from chronic undernutrition or hunger when they cannot grow or buy enough food to meet their basic needs, and children who suffer from this condition often live in developing countries. The consequences of undernutrition are mental retardation, stunted growth and death caused by infectious diseases, such as measles and diarrhea.

Malnutrition results from deficiencies of protein, calories and other key nutrients. This is because many of the world’s poor can afford only to live on a low-protein, high-carbohydrate, vegetarian diet. Overnutrition occurs when food energy intake exceeds energy use and causes excess body fat.

One of every three people has a deficiency of one or more vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin A, iron and iodine, the three of which are very important for keeping a good health.  Iron is a component of the hemoglobin that transports oxygen in the blood, so it's vital to be renewed in nutrition. If people don't consume iron in sufficient quantities, they might then suffer from anemia.  The lack of iron also may cause fatigue, make infection more likely and increase a woman’s chances of dying from hemorrhage in childbirth.

A famine  is a severe shortage of food in an area accompanied by mass starvation, many deaths, economic chaos, and social disruption. Famines often lead to mass migration of starving people to other areas or to refugee camps in their need for food, water, and medical attention from sickness and diseases that may appear from the lack of nutrition. Famines are usually caused by crop failures from drought, flooding, war and other catastrophic events.

There are three main systems which provide almost all of the world’s food:

• Croplands: Provides 77% if the world’s food using 11% of the world’s land area. These mostly produce grains.
• Rangelands and pastures: Provide about 16% of the world’s food using about 29% the world’s land area. These areas produce meat, mostly from grazing livestock.
• Oceanic fisheries: Supply about 7% of the world’s food from fishing activities.

Traditional agriculture consists of two main types which together are practiced by the 42% of the world’s people and provides one-fifth of the world’s food supply:

• Traditional Subsistence Agriculture: Uses mostly human labor and draft animals to produce only enough crops or livestock for a farm’s family survival.
• Traditional Intensive Agriculture: Farmers increase their inputs of human and draft-animal labor, fertilizer and water to obtain a higher yield per area of cultivated land. They produce enough food to feed their families and to sell.

Demographic Transition Model

DTM describes the pattern of decline in mortality and natality (fertility) of a country due to social and economic development. Cal be described as a 5 stage model:

• Pre-industrial
• LEDC
• Wealthier LEDC
• MEDC - stable
• MEDC - population decline

Population Pyramids

Also called age-sex pyramids, they show how many individuals are alive in different age groups (called cohorts) in a country or region for any given year. They also show the male-female ratio. Population numbers are on the x-axis and age groups are on the y-axis.

Types of pyramids:

• Stage 1: Expanding - High CBR, rapid fall in each upward age group due to high CDR, short life expectancy.
• Stage 2: Expanding - High CBR, fall in CDR as more individuals live to middle age, slightly longer life expectancy.
• Stage 3: Stationary - Declining CBR, low CDR, More individuals live to old age.
• Stage 4: Contracting - Low CBR, low CDR, higher dependency ratio (those that cannot work), longer life expectancy
• LEDCs tend to be in stage 1 or 2
• MEDCs tend to be in stage 3 or 4

Ways to reduce family size

There are several ways of reducing family size rather than imposing legislation as it's done in China:

• Provide education
• Promote alternative "family methods"
• Make contraception available
• Improve health availability
• Improve standards of living
• Improve economic conditions
• Provide nutrition
• Have a wider resource distribution

Some of these methods might be difficult to achieve in general but are the ways in which MEDCs have managed to reduce family size considerably. LEDCs should take these considerations in their development route.

Population size impact and changes

Impact
Population size is not the only factor that determines our species impact on the environment.

• Resource use and pollution
• Amount of wealth
• Resource desire
• Resource need

Many environmental impact models are based on the assumption that all individuals in a population have the same resource use and waste profile and thus impact the environment equally.


Changes
4 main factors for population changes:

• Birth rate
• Death rate
• Inmigration
• Emigration

The measures of population change are:

• Crude birth rate or CBR = (Number of births)/(Total population) * 1000
• Crude death rate or CDR = (Number of births)/(Total population) * 1000
• Natural increase rate or NIR = (CBR-CDR)/10
• Doubling rate = 70/NIR
• Total fertility rate: The number of children every woman is having in a determined area. The total fertility rate in the world is 3, 1.7 in MEDCs and between 3 and 6 in LEDCs
• Also important to note: Population density = (Total population)/(Total area)

MEDCs and LEDCs

Countries are classified economically based on industrial development and GDP (in the map, dark blue are developed, cyan are in transition, orange are less developed and red are least developed).

MEDCs - Most economically developed countries

(Tokyo, in Japan, one of the MEDCs)

• MEDCs are industrialized nations with high GDPs
• Relatively rich population and starvation is unlikely
• High level of resources per capita
• Relatively low population growth rates
• Shown in the map in blue (North America, Northern and Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand)

LEDCs - Least economically developed countries

(Port Au Prince, in Haiti, one of the LEDCs)

• Less industrialized or have no industries at all.
• Low GDPs and high poverty rates
• May have plenty of natural resources, but these are exported to MEDCs
• High population growth rates
• There are risks of starvation
• Shown in the map in red (Eastern and Western Africa, some parts of Asia)

Population - Limiting factors and growth curves

Limiting factors

Populations can change over time due to many factors or variables. These can be classified as:

• Density dependent factors
• Density independent factors

Density dependent factors are biotic

• They act as negative feedback
• Regulate and stabilize populations
• Internal factors act within the species (such as limited food supply)
• External factors act between different species (such as predation)

Density independent factors are abiotic

• They represent no feedback system
• Acts over all the ecosystem no matter the species that are present or the density
• Weather, climate, floods, storms.

Population curves

S-curve

• Starts with exponential growth
• Growth rate stabilizes
• Stabilize at carrying capacity (K)
• The area between the exponential growth curve and the S curve is called environmental resistance.
• lag / exponential / deceleration / stationary

J-curve

• Shows a boom and bust pattern
• Grows exponentially and then crashes
• Collapses are called diebacks
• Exceeds K (overshoot)
• Typical of microbes and invertebrates.

Sustainability and the sustainable yield

Sustainability means:

• Living  with the means of nature, on the "interest" or sustainable natural income generated by natural capital.
• However, economists and environmentalists may have very different views on what is sustainable.
• Any society that supports itself in part by depleting essential forms of natural capital is unsustainable.

Sustainable yield is the increase in natural capital. Natural income that can be exploited. It's important to know some factors:

• Carrying capacity
• Population size
• Total biomass or energy at a given time
• Rates of change of population, biomass and energy

Two formulas for calculating sustainable yield are

• (total biomass or energy at time t+1) - (total biomass or energy at time t)
• (Annual growth and recruitment) - (Annual deaths and emigration).

Resources - What to know about them.

Economic resources 

• An economic system produces and distributes goods and services by using natural, human and manufactured resources.
• An economic system consumes goods and services to satisfy people's needs and wants in the most efficient and effective way.

Resources

• May be known as capital
• Capital used as it is or to produce goods and services.
• There are three main types:


• Natural capital
• Human capital
• Manufactured capital

Natural capital and natural income

• Natural capital includes natural resources that have a value and those that support life.


• Trees, soil, water, living organisms, ores, etc.
• Flood and erosion protected by forests, etc.



• Natural capital can also be processes


• Photosynthesis
• Water and gas cycles

Natural capital in economic systems

• Capital yields income
• Natural capital yields natural income
• The World Bank now calculates wealth of countries by including the rate of extraction of natural resources and the ecological damage caused by this. Least developed countries might have a large amount of natural resources and natural capital, but these are exported to more developed countries for manufacture.
• Sustainability often represents sources of conflict within and between political parties and countries.

Natural income

• Yield or harvest of services
• Water cycle provides fresh water
• Photosynthesis provides oxygen

Resource categories

• Renewable: Can be replaced continuously as it is used by humans. For example, agriculture products.
• Non-renewable: Finite amounts of a resource, which are used as a short term solution. They might be replaced by other resource when depleted completely. For example, fossil fuels.
• Replenishable: Middle ground between renewable and nonrenewable, a resource that can be replaced but at slower rates than renewable resources. For example, groundwater.
• Recyclable: Resources that have been used and can be processed to be used again in another form. For example, paper glass and plastic.

Measuring Changes in an Ecosystem

The changes in an ecosystem may be:

• Biotic
• Abiotic
• Human impact

To evaluate these changes, an EIA might be used. EIA stands for Environmental Impact Assessment.