What are the strengths about our food system? (MULTIPLE CHOICE)
- We have a very efficient, productive and profitable food system
- Cheap food
- Good jobs
- Productive
- Safe
- Unbound by space and season
Characteristics of Peasant Agriculture:
- traditional agricultural producers that still exist the global south
- engage in diversified agriculture to achieve self-sufficiency of the family
- bound by traditional knowledge, geographical and climatic limitations
- their rights and responsibilities are defined by traditional norms
- they may be small landholders or tenant farmers often working on the land of large landowners
- their surplus is appropriated by the feudal state, traditional landlords, merchants or usurers
Properties of Closed-loop cycles of biological and physical materials:
- RECYCLING OF ORGANIC WASTES and nutrients back to the soil
- BIOLOGICAL APPROACHES (such as terracing, canal works) to limit soil erosion and enhance moisture retention to suppress undesirable pests
- relied mostly on ANIMAL POWER, HUMAN LABOUR AND SUN FOR ENERGY
- FERTILITY OF SOIL was key for productive agriculture (Weis 2017)
Capitalist effect on agriculture
- transformed the way we produce and distribute food
- rural farming disappeared
- family farmers in North America replaced by capitalist farmers
Agricultural forms in capitalist economies
- Simple commodity producers: produce for family survival
- Capitalist farmers: specialize in commodity production to maximize profits
- Plantation agriculture: large scale mono-cop farming s well as relying on slave labour
- Industrial agriculture: fossil fuel-powered machines, factories, and transportation systems, higher yielding seeds, pesticides and reducing biodiversity
Weis(is a person) coined something called the industrial grain-oilseed–livestock complex. What is it?
Industrial agriculture in temperate climates being dominated by a few grain and oil-seed mono-cultures and a few livestock species reared in high density factory farms and feedlots including:
- maize and wheat
- soybeans and canola
- pigs, poultry, and cattle
- higher profit margins
- availability of cheap animal protein
What are some Key dynamics of Industrial Agriculture(MULTIPLE CHOICE)
- continuous use of the same land (reduced fallowing)
- reduced recycling of organic material
- reduced soil moisture retention and increased erosion
- damage done to soil biota (the living component of soil)
- increased opportunities for weeds and insects to spread ‘thirstier’ enhanced seeds, compared with lower-yielding traditional varieties
- increased risks of animal health problems, diseases, and neurotic behaviors as a result of their intensive confinement and large concentrations in factory farms
- increased food safety concerns associated with foodborne bacteria and viruses
What are Externalities?
social, economic and environmental costs and benefits that are not included in the market price of products.
What is commodification?
This is a general tendency in all market economies. It refers to a process of agrarian transformation from non-market (subsistence) to market forms of production.
What is intensification?
Refers to rising levels of purchased agri-inputs and related increases in output per hectare of farmland
What is specialization?
limiting production to fewer products to concentrate the costs of production on a narrow range of items.
What is Biodiversity?(MULTIPLE CHOICE)
refers to the range of plant and animal species in a given area, and their complex interactions.
What is concentration?
Competition among farmers in adverse market and climatic conditions
result in smaller less competitive units to disappear which leads to increasing concentration
of land and machinery in the hands of fewer and larger farms.
