In the two introductory modules (1.1 and 1.2) of the course, we will introduce the main theme of the course: learning about food systems as systems that combine human social systems, with the natural earth system and earth surface processes, to fulfill the food needs of human societies. The objective is to prepare you to tackle learning about sub-components of these systems (e.g. water resources, soil management, adaptive capacity of food systems to climate change) in an integrated rather than a piecemeal way, which is essential to understanding the current function of food systems as well as proposing future solutions for these systems. During this introductory unit, you will also embark on the course capstone project that asks you to structure your learning about food systems of a particular world region. These introductory modules will also present the systems concept as a general way of thinking that applies especially well to food systems.
After completing this module, students will be able to:
Detailed instructions for completing the Summative Assessment will be provided in each module.
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If you have any questions, please send them through Canvas e-mail. We will check daily to respond. If your question is one that is relevant to the entire class, we may respond to the entire class rather than individually.
If you have any questions, please post them to the discussion forum in Canvas. We will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
This course, The Future of Food, provides introductory-level learning perspectives on human and environmental systems of food and resource use, in order to understand challenges and opportunities. The goal of the course is to understand and be able to apply an integrated perspective on the environmental and human dimensions of environmental issues related to food production and consumption. The content of the course addresses both environmental and human systems of food and resource use to an equal extent. In the case of the first (environmental systems), you will learn about the geosystems and agroecology of soil, nutrients, crops, water, and climate that form the fundamental basics of food-growing environmental systems. In the case of the second (human systems) you will learn about factors such as population and the roles of culture, social interactions, economics, and politics. These multiple perspectives are integrated into the framework of "Coupled Natural-Human Systems" (the CNHS is used beginning in 1.2 (also called Coupled Human-Natural Systems or CHN). We will focus on current environment-food systems, while also including the past trajectories and future trends of food systems. The course also blends information and analysis of local-scale environment and food systems with a focus on the regional, national, and global scales, and asks you as a learner to apply this knowledge in a Capstone Project that you assemble over the course of the semester in collaboration with other students. The course features active learning in both online and classroom settings and a wide variety of learning materials and methods.
“We are what we eat.” We’ve all heard this common expression and may think of it in nutritional and biological terms: for example the way that the chicken or beans we consume are turned into muscle tissues. However, this simple phrase has a deeper meaning: Food production, food culture, and organization of food transport and consumption loom very largely in the way that our society "is". These food-related activities also strongly impact the earth's fundamental surface processes and ecosystems. So, we are what we eat, but in a societal as well as an individual sense. This wider vision of food as a driving presence within society is increasingly relevant as groups and individuals like you become more interested in the ramifications of their food for themselves and for the environment. This course is designed to provide you with the tools to understand the combined environmental and human dimensions of food production and consumption. To do so we must start with some simple questions and reflect a bit on how we can address them.
Where does our food come from? And, how can we make our food supply more sustainable? These two questions may seem simple, but they lead us to a range of considerations that are covered through the remainder of this course. As we consider these questions in each module, we'll explore a model of food systems as human systems in interaction with natural systems, or coupled human-natural systems (Fig. 1.1.2). As the name suggests, the concept of Coupled Human-Natural Systems (CHNS) tries to describe two major components that are involved in the production and consumption of food. The first component is the natural world and a set of interacting natural factors. Some of you may know the term ecosystem, and ecosystems developed from interacting natural components such as water, soils, plants, and animals (e.g. Fig. 1.2.1 in module 1.2) are the context for most food production. Throughout the course, we may also refer to the elements and processes of ecosystems as the earth system and earth system processes, or simply as the environment. These natural systems are a basic foundation of the food supply that we will learn more about in modules four through six (Environmental Dynamics and Drivers). The continued productivity of natural systems is evaluated as being crucial to sustainability, as you will see in the short reading below.
On the other hand, the two questions posed above involve the role of people, both as individuals in groups such as communities, institutions (including colleges and universities, farm and food processing businesses, and farmer organizations, for example) and political units such as countries. To introduce this dimension we often refer to this globally as the "human system" within a coupled human-natural system (Fig. 1.1.2.; a complete definition of human and natural systems are given in Module 1.2). Within the human system, factors such as styles of farming and food choices, tastes, economic inequality, and farmer and scientific knowledge that inform humans' management of ecosystem emerge from human cultural, social, economic, and political influences.
The end result of these interactions between human and natural systems are what we call a food system, which has has also been called an "environment-food system" (see the introductory reading on the next page) with "environment" pointing to the natural components and the "food system" pointing to the human organization needed to produce, transport, and deliver food to consumers, along with a host of cultural, regulatory, and other aspects of human society that relate to food. In terms of geography, the interactions of environment-food systems exhibit a huge range of variation across the world. As we all know this variation exists between countries, so that food and farming types can be associated with “Chinese food,” “French food,” “Peruvian food”, or scores of other examples. Farming and food also vary a great deal among regions within a country and sometimes even among local places, as we know if we compare a large dairy or grain farm with a fresh vegetable farm serving local markets here in the United States. Understanding the geographic variations of environment-food interactions is key to recognizing their increased relevance and importance to people and places.
First, consider the list below of some of the main ideas in the reading. Do these roughly agree with your list of main points? You may have identified additional points in the reading.
We can also think of the way that these main points fit into a diagram, sometimes called a concept map, like the one that is drawn here. As part of the final assignment or summative assessment for module 1, and in the capstone assignment for the entire course, you will be drawing concept maps of a food system example. This diagram may get you started on visualizing human and natural components of food systems and their interaction. You'll note that a concept map can start from a very preliminary drawing or rough draft (like this one), and gradually be reorganized as you learn more about a topic use an organizational principle like the coupled human-natural systems concept we present in this course.
After reading Colin Sage's brief introduction to the modern-day issues surrounding environment and food, you should be aware of the fact that food production by human societies has transformed the earth's natural systems. In fact, it is very difficult to understate the enormous impact that food production to support human societies has had on the surface of our planet as the earth's population has grown. Here are some of them:
One term that is used to summarize these human impacts within the history of the earth is the Anthropocene, from Anthropos (human) and cene, a suffix used within the geologic timescale to denote the recent past. The Anthropocene has been proposed as a new geologic epoch because of the profound and unprecedented human alteration of earth's natural systems that we point to above. Scientists researching the Anthropocene tend to agree that it was the beginnings of agriculture that probably marked the onset of the Anthropocene. We will introduce you to the history of agriculture in Module 2. The concept of sustainable food systems that Colin Sage points to in the introductory reading are currently a major topic of debate and discussion in human societies and are a consequence of the sustainability issues that are a key feature of the Anthropocene. The idea of sustainable food systems is also a major topic of this course, and you will be asked to contribute to this discussion in your capstone project. The term Anthropocene helps us to appreciate the epochal change of the extent and degree of these changes. Yet these changes do not suggest or imply that all is lost, or that all cropping and livestock-raising are pervasively damaging to the environment. As you’ll see throughout this course there are already well-developed options worth considering and pursuing in order to expand sustainable environment-food systems.
Studies of the changes in the type of ecosystems that cover different areas of the earth or land cover (e.g. crop fields versus forest versus desert) allow us to appreciate the impact on earth during the Anthropocene (Fig. 1.1.4 below). We can see in the bar chart reflecting changes over time in land cover that farmed and grazed areas involved in food production for rising populations have expanded from less than 10% of earth's usable (ice-free) surface in the 1700s to over 50% in 2000, a stupendous change considering the size of earth's land area (similar expansion of human influence in food production in earth's ocean fisheries has also occurred).
Similarly important is that the Anthropocene, or the "human recent history of the earth" if we translate the word slightly, brings to our attention to not only the changes in natural systems or the environment but also the significant alterations of the human dimension of human-natural systems related to food. It’s safe to say that for nearly all of us this human dimension is significantly different than it was for our grandparents or even our parents. Some basic examples can be used to illustrate this trend. In the United States, for example, the population of farmers has continued to shrink. It is now less than 4 percent of the national population. At present this fraction, though generally declining worldwide, is somewhat higher in European countries and much higher in Asia and Africa. The continued importance of food-growing agriculture among large sectors of the populations in Africa and Asia, for example, creates different patterns of livelihoods (Fig 1.1.5a) and landscapes (Fig. 1.1.5b).
One important point: familiarity with environment-food systems through immediate experience among human populations, including you and your fellow learners in this course, is presumably at an all-time low. It’s also an interesting reflection on the human dimension of the Anthropocene. Other statistics could be quoted to show related trends. For example, the average amount of time being spent on food preparation is roughly one-quarter the standard allocation of time devoted to this activity 40-50 years ago. This course takes these statistics as a challenge and opportunity since environment-food interactions are both less-known than previously and, at the same time, have a very high level of importance to the environment and society.
The guided reading in this module on concerns around "Environment and Food" and our consideration of the Anthropocene as an era defined by the dramatic expansion of food production on earth's surface lead us naturally to the concept of sustainability, which is a common term in much of our discourse in the present day, in many different settings from the coffee shop and classroom, to dinner tables and company boardrooms, to government offices. As we think about the increasingly obvious impacts of our food system on the global environment and on the social dynamics of global society, we are concerned that this food system needs to (a) be part of society and communities with adequate opportunities for all and just relationships among people and (b) not compromise the future productivity and health of earth's many different environments. As part of the introductory work of this first module, we ought to consider a definition of sustainability that is broad enough to encompass both human and natural systems, and geographic scales from communities to single farming communities to the worldwide reach of food production and transport in the modern global food system. We present below in figure 1.1.6 one relatively common definition of sustainability as a "three-legged stool" (we will return to this concept later in Module 10 when we return to food systems).
In the model of the three-legged stool, environmental sustainability reflects protecting the future functioning, biodiversity, and overall health of earth's managed and wild ecosystems. Community and social sustainability reflect the maintenance or improvement of personal and community well-being into the future, versus relations of violence and injustice within and among communities. In the case of food systems, this reflects especially the just distribution of food and food security among all sectors of society, the just treatment of food producers and the rights of consumers to healthy food, and the expression of cultural food preferences. Economic sustainability within food systems has often been conceptualized as relationships of financial and supply chains that support sufficient prosperity for food producers and the economic access of consumers to food at affordable prices.
Dividing the concepts of sustainability into three parts of an integrated whole allows us to think about food production practices or food distribution networks, for example, are sustainable in different aspects. Excessive water use or fossil fuel consumption, for example, are aspects of environmental sustainability challenges in food systems considered further on in this course. Meanwhile, issues of food access, poverty, and displacement from war, and their impacts on human communities and their food security are issues that combine social and economic sustainability, which will also be considered by this course. The three-legged stool is a simple, if sometimes imperfect, way to combine the considerations of sustainability into a unified whole. As you consider the sustainability challenges at the end of module one and in your capstone project, you may be able to use these three different concepts along with the concepts in the guided reading to describe the sustainability challenges of some food system examples. You may want to ask yourself, is this practice or situation environmentally sustainable? socially sustainable? economically sustainable?
The interest in the sustainability of environment-food systems, as we've just defined them -- see the "three-legged stool" on the previous page -- has skyrocketed in recent years. A brief sampling of these issues involves the following:
We aim that this course will allow you as a learner to this rapidly expanding suite of interests while it offers background and the capacity to understand better and more fully these issues. You will pursue this aim through the readings and evaluations in this course, and also in completing a capstone project on the food system of a particular region.
One way to begin learning about this expanding interest is to consider the activities of individuals, communities, and governments as well as organizations ranging from nonprofits to international and global groups. In the case of individuals and communities, much interest is being generated by local food initiatives, such as farmers’ markets, and other local groups of producers and consumers seeking to improve environment-food systems. A variety of government agencies in the United States and other countries have also become increasingly involved in environment-food issues.
The United States Department of Agriculture [8], for example, now offers a focus on environment-food issues such as responses to climate change and dietary guidelines in its range of research and science activities. The USDA website also includes the compilation of data through its different research services that you will use in this course.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) [9], which is based in Rome, Italy, is one of a number of international organizations focused on environment-food issues. It addresses nearly all the topics raised in the course, as well as many others. The statistical branch of the FAO, known as FAOSTATS, is an important source of information on the international dimension of issues involving food and the environment.
Numerous non-profit organizations are involved in environment-food issues in the United States and in other countries. One of these organizations in the U.S., which is called Food Tank [10], periodically provides the lists of other organizations that it considers leaders in environment-food issues. In 2014, for example, Food Tank named the "101 Organizations to Watch in 2014 [11]”. This interesting list, complete with brief descriptions, includes a number of both well-known and lesser-known groups active in environment-food issues. Other organizations have greatly expanded their environment-food focus. National Geographic, for example, now has a major focus on environment-food issues. Its website includes an important section on food and water within the organization’s initiative on EarthPulse: A Visual Guide to Global Trends. This section includes a number of excellent global maps of environmental and food conditions, challenges, and potential solutions.
These resources may be a help to you as you consider not just the learning resources we present in this text, but the real efforts to promote environmental, social, and economic sustainability in food systems, which you will address in the final section of the course and in your capstone project.
Look over Food Tank's "101 organizations to Watch in 2014 [11]".
Choose one organization from this website that treats the combination of environment-and-food issues. You'll need to be selective since some of the organizations specialize in food-related issues but have little emphasis on environmental one. Also, read the assignment from Colin Sage, pp. 1-8 on "Introduction: Why environment and food? [1]" in Environment and Development that is one of the required readings for this module (see the assignments page)
Then,
Your writing should be between one and one and a half pages long, and no longer than two pages. When appropriate, you can relate the work of this organization to the other material in this introductory module regarding multidisciplinary approaches or the concept of the Anthropocene. Be sure to describe what types of environmental and food issues are being addressed by this organization, as well as the wider factors and sustainability questions.
Please submit your assignment in Module 1 Formative Assessment in Canvas.
Your assignment will be evaluated based on the following rubric. The maximum grade for the assignment is 25 points.
Criteria | Score of 5 | Score 3 | Score 1 |
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Answer adequately addresses the organization's relationship to the environmental AND food issues as well as its understanding of sustainability and sustainability goals. | A clear description of both environment and food issues and sustainability and how the organization interprets the linkages between. | Some mention of both environmental and food issues addressed by the organization, and how sustainability is understood. | Little mention of any element or one of the elements missing. |
Answer addresses summary details of the organization as requested in the assignment (e.g. food/environment goals, longevity, target audience or client group, etc.) | Complete mention of all elements clearly explained. | Mentions most elements | Mentions less than half of the elements. |
The answer is legible, correct, and clearly written. | Clearly structured writing organized into themes, easily readable, with very few grammatical errors. | Some gaps in clarity or grammar errors, but significant effort is indicated, easily readable. | Difficult to read or many grammatical errors. |
The answer relates the organization description to course content and reading. | Shows an understanding of environment and food issues as addressed by course materials, as well as relating these to other material in the module – multidisciplinarity or the Anthropocene. | Shows an understanding of environment and food issues as addressed by course materials | Shows incomplete understanding of environment and food issues as described in the course materials. |
Length | Writing is sufficiently long and provides an adequate and interesting level of detail about the organization | Insufficient length to fully engage the topic. | Writing is only 1-2 sentences on all topics or relies on quick, outline-style response. |
Module 1.2 continues the goal of the introductory module, which is to introduce the course themes of integrated perspectives on the environmental and human systems that are related to food production and consumption. In the case of the first (environmental systems), the course places emphasis on the Geosystems and agroecology of soil, nutrients, crops, water, and climate that form the fundamental basics of food-growing environmental systems. In the case of the second (human systems) the course emphasizes factors such as population and the roles of culture, social interactions, economics, and politics. Module 1.2 builds on the concepts of multidisciplinarity introduced in Module 1.1 by introducing the Coupled Natural-Human systems framework as a conceptual tool where multiple natural and social disciplines are used to understand food systems. Building from simple examples of home gardens and hunting/fishing considered as natural/human systems, Module 1.2 provides an introductory description of food systems both as integrated production/transport/production chains and as interacting natural and human subsystems. Both of these themes will be deepened in Module 8, but the purpose here is to introduce them in basic form so that the subsequent modules on domestication, water, soils, and agroecology can utilize the framework and place even emphasis on both human and natural factors. Module 1.2 also advances the thesis (and key geosciences concept) that the global food system is a major area in which humans are transforming earth surface properties and processes during the Anthropocene. In Module 1.2 students are asked to complete a formative assessment in identifying introductory concepts in real examples of food systems which span local to global scales, and which take place both within and outside of the United States. The module concludes with a summative assessment that applies systems thinking and asks students to map a food system example and explore how relationships between parts of a food system are as important as knowledge about each part.
In this course, we will refer to the term "system" repeatedly, so it is worthwhile to think about how systems are defined. A basic definition of a system is "a set of components and their relationships". Rather than dwelling on this definition in the abstract, it's probably best to immediately think of how the definition applies to real examples from this course. An ecosystem is a type of system you may have heard of, in which the components are living things like plants, animals, and microbes plus a habitat formed of natural, urban, and agricultural environments, and all the relationships among these component parts, with an emphasis on the interactions between the living parts of the system and their interactions, for example, food webs in which plants feed herbivores and herbivores feed carnivores. A food system, as we have just begun to see so far, consists of food production components like farms, farm fields, and orchards, along with livestock; food distribution chains including shipping companies and supermarkets, and consumers like you and your classmates, with myriad other components like regulatory agencies, weather and climate, and soils. In the case of food systems we have already pointed out how these can be considered as human-natural (alternatively, human-environment) systems, where it can help to see the system as composed of interacting human components (societies, companies, households, farm families) and natural components like water, soils, crop varieties, livestock, and agricultural ecosystems.
Systems that contain a large number of components interacting in multiple ways (like an ecosystem, above, or the human-natural food systems elsewhere in this text) are often said to be complex. The word "complex" may have an obvious and general meaning from daily use (you may be thinking "of course it is complex! there are lots of components and relationships!") but geoscientists, ecologists, and social scientists mean something specific here: they are referring to ways that different complex systems, from ocean food webs to the global climate system, to the ecosystem of a dairy farm, display common types of behavior related to their complexity. Here are some of these types of behaviors:
To these more formal definitions of complex systems, we should add one more feature that we will reinforce throughout the course in describing food systems that combine human and natural systems, which is that drivers and impacts often cross the boundary between human or social systems and environmental or natural systems (recall Fig. 1.1.2). Our policies, traditions, and culture have impacts on earth's natural systems, and the earth's natural systems affect the types of human systems that develop, while changes in natural systems can cause changes in policies, traditions, and culture.
For more information on complex systems properties with further examples, see Developing Student Understanding of Complex Systems in Geosciences [13], from the "On the Cutting Edge" [14] program.
On the next page, we'll see an interesting example of complex system behavior related to the food system in India.
The "Indian Vulture Crisis" may or not be a familiar term to you, but it is important enough to the history of modern India that it has involved dozens of research experts as well as major changes in wildlife, human health, and government policies, and now has its own Wikipedia page (Indian vulture crisis [15]) that you can browse. It is also an interesting example of complex systems behavior that involves food systems and unintended consequences of veterinary care for animals. The main causal links are outlined below in figure 1.2.2, and the narrative of the crisis goes as follows:
Beef cattle are hugely important to Indian food systems even though they are usually not consumed by adherents of the majority Hindu religion (however, Indian Christians and Muslims, for example, do consume beef). Cattle are also widely used as dairy animals (think: yogurt and clarified butter as important parts of Indian cuisine) and are even more important as traction animals (oxen) to till soil for all-important food crops by small-scale farmers across India. Because of their importance and to treat inflammation and fevers in cattle, in the 1990s the drug diclofenac was put into widespread use across India. However, timed with the release of this medication, a precipitous drop in the population of Indian vultures began, which became the fastest collapse of a bird population ever recorded. Vultures are not valued in many parts of the world, but scavenging by vultures was the main way that dead animal carcasses were cleared from Indian communities, especially in the case of beef cattle where the meat is not consumed. It was not until the 2000s that the cause of vulture population collapse was discovered to be the diclofenac medicine administered to cattle, which is extremely toxic to vultures eating dead carcasses. However, the consequences of this population collapse did not end with the solving of the mystery of the vulture population collapse, which was already a tragic and unforeseen consequence. Rather, the fact that vultures are a key part of a complex system resulted in further unforeseen consequences in both human and natural parts of the Indian food system. A few of these are shown in figure 1.2.2 below: first, since vultures are in fact an ideal scavenger that creates a "dead end" for human pathogens in rotting carcasses, and since they were no longer present, water supplies suffered greater contamination from carcasses that took months instead of weeks to rot, leading to greater human illness. Second, populations of rats and dogs, which are less effective carcass scavengers, expanded in response to these carcasses and the lack of competition from vultures, which resulted in dramatic increases in rabies (and other diseases) due to larger dog and rat populations and human contact with wild dogs. This is significant since more than half of the world's human rabies deaths occur in India. Finally, the vulture crisis even had implications for religious rituals in India: people of the Parsi faith, who practice an open-air "sky burial" of their dead where the body is consumed by vultures, were forced to abandon the practice because of hygiene concerns when human bodies took months instead of weeks to decompose. A final consequence of these problems was that the drug diclofenac was banned from use in India, Nepal, and Pakistan in hopes of helping vulture populations to revive. This final turn of events is an example of the human system responding to the unforeseen consequences. Additionally, alternatives to these drugs have been developed for veterinary use that have no toxicity to vultures.
Note the properties of complex systems and human-natural systems exhibited by this example. Farmers sought mainly to protect their cattle from inflammation and speed healing in service of the food system, while pharmaceutical companies sought to profit from a widespread market for an effective medication. The additional, cascading effects of the human invention diclofenac, however, were dramatic, far-ranging, and in some cases unexpected, because of the many interacting parts in the food systems and ecosystems of Indian rural areas: cattle, groundwater, wild dogs, and human pathogens like rabies. The crisis eventually provoked responses from the human system, with impacts on human burial practices among the Parsi, laws banning diclofenac, and development of alternative medications. The search for sustainability in food systems, like those you will think about for your capstone regions, involves designing and choosing adequate human responses to complex system behavior.
One final note on this example is to point out that to fully understand the Indian vulture crisis a large number of different disciplines were brought to bear: we need cultural knowledge about the beliefs and practical usefulness of both cattle and vultures in India. We also need biological knowledge about drug toxicity to wildlife, pathogens, groundwater contamination by microbes, and rat and dog populations. We also need policy expertise to think about transitioning food systems to less toxic alternatives to current practices. And all of these disciplines needed to be brought together in an integrated whole to assemble the diagram shown in figure 1.2.2. The purpose of this text and this course on food systems is to help you to develop some of the skills needed for this sort of interdisciplinary analysis of human-environment or human-natural systems.
Some of you in this course, perhaps even many of you, have had the experience of growing herbs or vegetables (Fig. 1.2.3) or keeping chickens for eggs or animals for meat. Although dwarfed by the enormous dimensions of the global food system, home food production is still a significant part of the food consumed by billions of earth's inhabitants. In other cases, small-scale fishing and hunting provide highly nutrient-dense foods, and coexist with modernized and industrial food systems, as any fishers and hunters in the class may be able to attest. These experiences of food production for personal or family consumption show natural-human interactions in a very simple way. To grow vegetables or hunt or raise animals means bringing together natural factors (seed, animal breeds, soil, water, fishing and hunting ranges, etc.) and also human factors (e.g. knowledge of plants, livestock, or wild animals, government policies) to gain access to food, as well as food storage and preparation, markets for tools and seeds, or human-built infrastructures like a garden fence or a chicken coop. This same interaction between natural and human factors is evident at a larger scale in the photo in Figure 1.2.4, which shows a landscape that has been transformed by a human community for food production.
Beyond these experiences of auto-sufficient food production and consumption, however, most of humanity also currently depends on global and local versions of the food system which features a web of suppliers, producers, transporters, and marketers that supply all of us as food consumers. Compared to gardening, catching trout, or keeping chickens, these food systems together form a far more complex version of the interactions between natural and human factors that produce and transport the food that we then consume as part of global and local food systems.
One way of viewing these regional and global food systems is that they can be divided by the type of activity in relation to food, and dividing them into components of food production, food transport, and food consumption (Fig. 1.2.5). Like other diagrams we've seen so far, this diagram can be considered a concept map showing relationships between the different components of a food system. The main arrows show the flow of food through the system from the managed natural environments used to produce food and the end result of nutrition and health outcomes. There are some unseen or implicit relationships here as well, like the way that farming practices, technology, communication and education, and other attributes of human societies support the functioning of a food system, and are included in the outer system boundary.
In addition to this more linear or "conveyer belt" portrayal of food systems delivering nutrition from natural resources, we may also be interested in thinking about the dramatic impacts humans have made on earth systems during the Anthropocene, discussed in module 1.1. In that light, we know that these natural systems may either be sustained or degraded by management, an important response that either maintains or undermines the entire food system. For this purpose, we may be interested in a food system diagram that makes the interactions among human and natural systems very explicit. Below in figure 1.2.6 is a version of a Coupled Human-Natural Systems diagram -- again, a concept map of sorts -- developed by an interdisciplinary group of social and environmental scientists (Liu et al. 2007) to represent the human-environment interactions in food systems.
This diagram highlights internal interactions within both the natural and human components of the food system. The natural components of food systems shown here are those we will tackle first in the first part of the course, while the latter half of the course will address the human system aspects of food systems and human-environment interactions shown as the large arrows connecting these two major components. As we saw in comparing home garden production, smallholder production landscapes and global food production chains above, food systems and their components are highly varied. However many similarities apply across the different components, actors, and environments of the food system:
First, download the worksheet [16] to understand and complete the assessment. This assignment will require you to draw on your reading of this online text from module one, as well as several options for case studies where we have provided brief descriptions and audiovisual resources (radio clips, videos, photos) that describe these systems. You will accomplish two parts of an assignment that will not only evaluate the learning objectives for module one but will also give you practice in skills you will need to complete your capstone project. These two parts are:
You will complete this assignment for your choice of two food system examples, as described in the detailed instructions below. You will first read, then draw a concept map, and then fill in a table with short responses.
Pennsylvania is the fourth largest state in the nation for milk production, after California, Wisconsin, and New York. Cows produce about 1.3 billion gallons of milk every year in Pennsylvania. Interestingly, 99% of Pennsylvania’s dairy farms are family-owned, which is in contrast to states such as California where large industrial dairies dominate production. On most conventional Pennsylvania dairy farms cows are fed forage crops that are grown on farms such as fermented chopped maize plants (silage) and alfalfa. These on-farm forages are mixed with other feed components that are imported to the farm to optimize milk production. There is also an expanding organic dairy sector in Pennsylvania that uses grazing whenever possible to satisfy the U.S. National Organic Program's regulations and organic philosophies of animal management (e.g. Fig. 1.2.8). Pennsylvania’s relatively good soils, temperate climate, and proximity to Eastern U.S. markets have helped to make dairy farms a dominant presence in Pennsylvania agriculture. Farms generally are on flat to hilly topography in what was originally forest, and patches of forest are still very common on steeper terrain throughout Pennsylvania. Manure produced by dairy cows is recycled into the soil to provide crops with nutrients. Farmers have to manage the application of manure and other fertilizers so that nutrients are best used by the crop and do not pollute waterways, which has been a major issue for water quality in the Chesapeake Bay downstream of Pennsylvania farms. Milk produced on these dairy farms is gathered into central processing plants and is then distributed to stores for purchase for consumers, or bought by other dairy industry manufacturers such as yogurt and cheese plants.
Be sure to also explore the following website to gain more insight on Pennsylvania’s dairy sector as part of the food system in order to successfully build your concept map and fill in the table items in the assignment:
Beef production on Colorado’s high plains. Few topics arouse as much debate in conversations around the current trends, sustainability, and alternatives in food systems as meat consumption, and especially feedlot beef consumption which requires relatively large amounts of water and energy to grow the feed necessary for cattle production using feedlots. This remarkable if somewhat older video presents in a matter-of-fact way the practices, infrastructure, and modification of nature involved in beef production at small and very large scales on the high plains of Colorado (Warning: this video shows brief scenes from a slaughterhouse, e.g. cutting of carcasses). Watch for details about the use of water in a dryland environment, how feed is acquired in both systems to fatten animals, the use of technology to maximize the weight gain of animals, and the details of transport to market.
Auctioneer voice.
Narrator: An auction in Greeley, a small town north of Denver, and the cattle raising center of Colorado.
Auctioneer voice.
Narrator: The calves have been bred in the pastures of the surrounding ranches. Now they come to be fattened up in the feedlots. This is Jim Park, the owner of a small family farm near Greeley, who raises cattle. And Carl Montega, a buyer for Monfort, the biggest meat producer in the area. Monfort of Colorado, a beef producing company with its own feedlots, slaughterhouses, and car parks. 85,000 animals can be fattened at the same time, 200,000 per year in this feedlot alone. And Monfort operates another two facilities of the same size in this region. Located on a high plateau, the climate on the plains is ideal for the animals. It is dry in summer and cold and dry in winter. This makes the cattle resistant to germs and infection. Monfort buys calves from all over the United States and sends them to Greeley to be fattened. They will be fed here for about 110 days until they have reached a suitable weight for slaughter. The new arrivals are sorted by age and size and then vaccinated. They are given a sedative against the stress of this new unfamiliar environment. Each animal is given a computer number and a hormone capsule is implanted. The hormones cause the animals to gain weight more quickly. Then an antiseptic bath to kill off bacteria. Cattle owners fear nothing more than an outbreak of infection in feedlots. Nevertheless, 1% of the livestock, that's about 2,000 cattle a year, will die from dust and stress before they reach the slaughterhouse. Jim Park’s family farm is only about a five-minute drive from Montfort. Jim Park owns about 250 acres of irrigated land; on which he grows fodder for his beef stock. He fattens 1,100 animals per year in a feedlot. Only two men run the farm, Jim himself and another farmhand. The business is fully mechanized with its own feed mill and all necessary equipment. Jim Park sells his cattle to the highest bidder among the US meat producers, including Monfort of Colorado.
Jim Park: Oh, we've been in the business of feeding cattle probably about 20 years. Before that, we used to milk cows here. The old red barn behind us here, that's where we used to milk cows. But we've kind of got out of that business and basically just feedlot, feeding cattle right now. We raise most of our own alfalfa and corn, silage (the roughage part of it). I do have to buy some shelled corn, but the biggest majority of the feed we raise right here on the place and feed it to the cattle. I don't sell any corn or alfalfa off the place it all goes through the cattle.
Male voice (not visible): When Monfort is big business and is so close to you, is a family farm able to survive?
Jim Park: Well I think so. Big, of course, is maybe more efficient. But I think I think one of the disadvantages of being so big is everything is hired labor. At least here I own the cattle myself and I do have one man that's here year-round that works with me. And we just take more of a caring role, I think. If you're working for a big company, a lot of times you maybe don't care so much whether one sick or whether they're eating the way they should be or things like this. So I think we can probably compete just about as well.
Male voice (not visible): How did this farm start here?
Jim Park: Well my great granddad, fella by the name of Frederick Niemeyer, and Fritz was kind of his nickname. Fritz came to this country in the mid-1800s and he came from Germany over here to the United States and he homesteaded this place. It's been in the family since about 1888, so we've been here a little over 100 years.
Narrator: Like Fritz Niemeyer, many Germans settled in Colorado at that time. The land was well suited for growing sugar beets, something they were very good at. But the water shortage in Colorado meant hardship for the farmers. The drought of 1927-35, worse than any before, turned fertile land into desert. The farms were buried by sandstorms. The land could no longer feed the people and most of the farmers had to leave their homes. In 1935 the Colorado government started work on a gigantic irrigation project. The Rocky Mountains formal watershed, the farms and arable land on the Great Plains, seventy miles to the east, are only sparingly supplied with meltwater from the mountains. This is because most of the snow falls on the western side of the Rockies. Large water reservoirs were built west of the mountain range. From there a tunnel was drilled straight through the mountain and a pipeline was laid. When the rivers begin to dry up in summer, the stored water is pumped from west to east. It flows through pipelines down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains to the plains below, and can also be used to generate hydroelectric power. The water then flows through two canal systems north into the Cache la Poudre and south into the South Platte River. Many ditches carry it from the river to the fields and farms. In addition to wheat, corn, and alfalfa, corn for silage has become the main crop in Colorado. Under contract from Montfort, many farmers plant crops which are then harvested by Monfort using its own equipment and workforce. The corn is chopped right in the fields to form silage. It is then stored in silos in Monfort’s feedlot. Montfort buys corn wherever the price is right. In the feed mill, the grain is heated and ground in flakers, to form corn flakes. The fodder is mixed by compute. Cornflakes, silage, proteins, and vitamins are blended together for each group of cattle according to their age and weight. They are fed twice a day. The fodder is heated so that the animals waste no energy bringing it to body temperature. The aim - a weight gain of three pounds per day.
Woman’s voice (operator): Please feed pen 134 for 15 head, 604 for 20 head, and 542 for 1 head.
Narrator: Twenty farms are connected to this irrigation canal. The next-to-the-last is Jim's. A co-op, formed by the farmers, manages and supervises the just distribution of water. When water is short, some farmers even lock their gates to prevent water from being stolen. Some water rights date back to the previous century. These oldest rights are also the most valuable because they are the last to have their water restricted.
Male voice (not visible): What would your land be worth without the water right?
Jim Park: Oh a couple hundred dollars an acre and with the water probably two thousand. So it's about a tenfold increase by having the water and being able to raise the crops. Fifteen minutes away from the feedlot, on the outskirts of Greeley, lies Montfort’s slaughterhouse. 5,000 animals are killed here per day in two shifts. The Monfort slaughterhouse in Greeley is considered one of the most modern in the world. And Monfort operates five other slaughterhouses in the US, and itself is only a small part of the gigantic food corporation, Conagra. After being refrigerated for 24 hours the carcasses are halved and sorted according to cut. Except for the tip of the tail, every part of the animal is put to good use. 2,500 people work here. A major part of the meat is processed into ground beef and prepared as hamburgers right here in the slaughterhouse, for a large restaurant chain. Premium meat is then put in boxes for delivery. Boxed beef is a Monfort specialty. There are no butchers needed in supermarkets. In addition, the freezer trucks can carry four times as much box meat as carcasses. Montfort has thus become one of the three market leaders and supplies the entire United States, in particular, the big cities along the East Coast. It used to make no difference how large cattle grew to be. Nowadays, however, a uniform size is essential for modern meatpacking plants because, otherwise, the cattle won't fit into the box.
Starting from modest beginnings and export of asparagus from Peru to Denmark in the 1950s, the industrial-scale asparagus sector in Peru’s dry coastal valleys (especially around the city of Ica, Peru) grew rapidly in the 1990s into one of the premier examples of a globalized export vegetable sector (Fig. 1.2.9), able to occupy a large percentage of the world’s off-season market in asparagus when producers in the northern hemisphere are not producing asparagus (FAO 2007). The asparagus sector in Peru takes advantage of the extremely dry climate to make asparagus plants go dormant in the same way that winters in the northern hemisphere make the perennial asparagus plants die back so that they create new edible shoots in the spring. When a field of Peruvian asparagus is ready to go into production, irrigation from rivers and river-fed water tables in coastal valleys is turned on, and a flush of asparagus shoots grows, is harvested using labor that is relatively cheap on a global scale, and immediately flown in refrigerated containers to markets in the rest of the world, chiefly Europe. Asparagus is also notable for being a delicacy among U.S. and European consumers, with a sort of star status among gourmet eaters (see e.g. Peruvian Asparagus [18]) Industrial-scale asparagus producers in Peru were able to achieve this scale of production and access to the global market via support from the Peruvian government, the help of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and their own resources and investment, based on earlier successes in the production of cotton in irrigated valleys (FAO, 2007). Interestingly, Ica asparagus growers organized several international tours to learn industrial methods of production in Europe and the U.S. and adapt them to their own region. However, the large scale of production and amounts of water needed are straining water supplies in the Ica region and have prompted objections regarding water supplies for other uses and the environment. Further, expansion of irrigation in Ica has been based on dam-building in upriver sites which alters ecosystems and water rights for other farmers in these valleys. The abundant supply of migrant labor from the Peruvian highlands and the economic power of the growers has also led to labor relations that are often quite unfavorable to workers.
Before drawing your concept map and filling in the table information for this assignment make sure to read the following news piece about Peruvian Asparagus from to learn more about the Peruvian asparagus industry and concerns about fresh water supply: Peru water wars threaten export boom [19].
You may also want to consult this brief from an industry news site covering the global fresh fruit and vegetable trade, detailing how asparagus is the most common Peruvian product shipped by air: Peru: [20]Asparagus is the most exported product by air [21]
Diaz, Luz Rios. 2007. Agro-industries characterization and appraisal: Asparagus in Peru [22]. Rome: FAO, 56 p.
Many in the class will be familiar with the recent growth of farmers' markets and other forms of direct marketing in which farmers sell more directly to consumers to capture a greater percentage of the final purchase price. This includes mail-order grass-fed beef from South Dakota, organic farms, and other small farms selling at open-air markets in any given small and medium city, and medium to large scale farms that produce for multiple restaurant accounts in large cities. The New York City greenmarkets (Fig. 1.2.10) are an excellent and long-standing example of this trend, starting with a few street corner vegetable markets and growing into an important hub of the Grow NYC sustainability movement in New York. The Grow NYC website Greenmarket Farmers Markets [23] documents that over 30,000 acres of farmland as well as small fishing operations near New York City form a ‘foodshed (analogous to a watershed feeding to a larger water body) that has made important inroads towards greater access to locally or regionally produced food with more sustainable practices, including participation in food assistance programs that strive to provide greater access to lower-income New Yorkers. Greenmarkets thus provide a growing, if small, proportion of New York City’s food supply.
Vegetable and livestock producers that participate in New York City greenmarkets are in many ways sustaining and building on the legacy of small truck farms that for generations utilized fertile farmland surrounding many eastern cities (think of the sometimes mysterious identity of New Jersey as the ‘Garden State’). Today these farms generally have land sizes of 5 to 50 acres, much smaller than the farm sizes of Midwestern grain farms or California industrial vegetable production. They are comparatively diverse farms in terms of combining many different products (including eggs and meat) that can be sold for relatively advantageous prices together in a farmers market. Farms like those in the Hudson Valley North of New York City utilize flat, deep soils adjacent to river floodplains that are excellent for long-term production of crops if they are well cared for. These farms are also able to recycle relatively abundant urban wastes from dense urban and suburban populations (e.g. green wastes, manure from neighboring small livestock farms, city and county composting programs) that are used to keep soils extremely productive by global terms. In fact, some of these farms may face some of the same problems of nutrient excesses presented in the case above on Pennsylvania dairy farming systems. They also are able to grow crops for the sole purpose of adding organic matter to the soil and covering the soil in the winter (cover crops) that help to keep soil quality high. Produce and animal products are trucked directly to green market sites in New York City or to pick-up points for subscription-based Community-supported agriculture programs.
In contrast to the highly specialized and industrialized production of Peruvian asparagus for the global market (above), smallholders in the Andean Mountains of Peru integrate a wide variety of livestock and crop types on their farms, from llamas to sheep to dairy cattle, and from native potato varieties to maize as well as legume grains and forages and vegetables. They also place a high priority on self-sufficiency in many food crops, balanced with sales to local (e.g. within community barter and purchase on community market days) and regional (e.g. wholesale to regional intermediary buyers and markets, Fig. 1.2.11). The variety of crops, livestock, and production is partly explained by the varied elevation and soil types found in the mountainous Andean environment. A high diversity of products, production strategies, and market versus consumption destinations for agricultural production has thus emerged in modern Andean societies as a way to adapt to both the natural risks of a mountain environment (e.g. drought, frost, hail) and the opportunities and challenges of a complex and fluctuating market that very often does not favor the farmer’s interests.
The integration of small livestock herds in these systems is very important and allows farmers higher value products such as wool and meat that can be used for short-term cash needs. Grazing livestock also allows them to “harvest” manure nutrients via grazing on high-altitude grasslands. When animals are penned into night-time corral areas they produce manure that is stored for use in fertilizing crop fields. Farmers also apply limited amounts of modern chemical fertilizers to their crops, especially those destined for regional markets. Increasingly, farm communities are banding together using strong and complex community government schemes to win government funding for and build community-wide irrigation schemes that are fed by mountain stream systems. These irrigation systems, some very extensive, are used for adaptation to drought years, expansion of cultivated land or irrigation of fodder crops to feed animals year-round in small intensified dairy schemes. The expansion of small dairy enterprises has been driven by increases in the price of milk in Andean countries from growing urban populations. Because of the preponderance of sloped land in these mountain systems, soil productivity for these Andean smallholders is very vulnerable to erosion during the intense rainy season of the Central Andes. Climate change has also tended to accentuate the severity of climate risks in these systems.
In the following modules, you will be learning about aspects of natural systems within human-natural food systems that support food production. As you pursue your learning about these natural systems, keep in mind that natural systems (freshwater resources, soil, the oceans, and the atmosphere) within food systems are always interacting with human systems components (knowledge, management, and policies for example).
You have reached the end of Module 1! Double-check the to-do list on the Module Roadmap [25] to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Module 2.
Diaz, Luz Rios. 2007. Agro-industries characterization and appraisal: Asparagus in Peru. Rome: FAO. 56 p. Accessible at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap297e/ap297e.pdf [22].
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod1/CHAPTER_ONE_Introduction_Why_environment.pdf
[2] http://www.pri.org/stories/2012-01-23/despite-economic-gains-perus-asparagus-boom-threatening-water-table
[3] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/972
[4] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/1083
[5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/afeitar/7916145080/in/photostream/
[6] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0
[7] https://www.nsf.gov/
[8] https://www.usda.gov/topics/research-and-science
[9] http://www.fao.org/home/en/
[10] https://foodtank.com/
[11] http://foodtank.com/news/2014/01/one-hundred-one-organizations-to-watch-in-20141
[12] https://foodtank.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjw8IXMBRB8EiwAg9fgME6OlwkSnQ_tVCnKryfoTxttVIPUDp3I6yBU44NCeHup0vZ0Y8MIkhoCLNwQAvD_BwE
[13] http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/complexsystems/introduction.html
[14] https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/about/index.html
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis
[16] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod1/Food_Module1Worksheet_RevisionSummer2016.docx
[17] https://www.centerfordairyexcellence.org/pa-dairy-goodness-that-matters/pa-dairy-overview/
[18] http://www.asparagus-lover.com/Peruvian-asparagus.html
[19] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-peru-water/peru-water-wars-threaten-agricultural-export-boom-idUKTRE68N4DN20100924
[20] https://www.freshplaza.com/article/2003185/peru-asparagus-is-the-most-exported-product-by-air/
[21] https://www.thepacker.com/news/produce-crops/peruvian-asparagus-importers-face-transportation-issues
[22] http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap297e/ap297e.pdf
[23] https://www.grownyc.org/greenmarket
[24] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
[25] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/882
[26] http://www.fao.org/docrep/w0078e/w0078e04.htm