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Spec mapping (AQA 7037): Paper 2, §3.2.4 Population and the Environment — the global pattern of food production and consumption; agricultural systems and food production; the role of agribusiness and transnational corporations; the components of the global food system and the trade in food; the relationship between food production and the physical environment. It also reaches forward to §3.2.5 Resource Security, where the food system is treated as one of the strategic resources alongside water and energy. This lesson supplies the system within which the next lesson (food security) and the one after (production strategies) operate. It links synoptically to §3.2.1 Global Systems and Global Governance (the food trade is a defining global flow, dominated by TNCs and shaped by trade rules) and to §3.1.1 Water and Carbon Cycles (agriculture is a major driver of land-use change, carbon emissions and the water cycle). Assessment objectives: AO1 — knowledge of food-system structure, the Green Revolution, agribusiness and commodity chains; AO2 — application to real cases (Indian wheat, the cocoa chain, the UK food system); AO3 — interpretation and evaluation of production and trade data and of contested concepts such as "food miles".
This lesson examines how food is produced, distributed and consumed at a global scale. You will study the structure of the global food system, trends in food production, the Green Revolution, agribusiness, food regimes, food miles, commodity chains and the role of transnational corporations (TNCs).
It pays to begin by treating food as a system with inputs, processes, outputs and feedback — the systems language that runs throughout A-Level geography.
graph LR
I["Inputs<br/>land, water, labour,<br/>seeds, fertiliser, energy,<br/>capital, technology"] --> P["Processes<br/>production, processing,<br/>distribution, trade,<br/>retail, consumption"]
P --> O["Outputs<br/>food, income, exports,<br/>waste, emissions,<br/>environmental change"]
O -- "feedback: prices, profit, degradation" --> I
The modern global food system has four linked components: production (farming, fishing), processing and manufacturing, distribution and trade, and consumption. What makes it global is that these stages are increasingly spatially separated — cocoa grown in Ghana, processed in Switzerland, manufactured in Germany, consumed in the UK — and corporately concentrated, with a small number of TNCs controlling the strategic nodes (seeds, grain trade, processing, retail). Geographers describe successive historical configurations of this system as food regimes (a concept from Friedmann and McMichael): the first (c.1870–1930s) centred on colonial settler exports of grain and meat to Europe; the second (post-1945) on US grain surpluses and state-subsidised agriculture; and a contested third, "corporate" regime since the 1980s, dominated by TNC-led global value chains, supermarkets and trade liberalisation. This framing helps explain why value and power are distributed as they are.
Global food production has increased dramatically since the mid-20th century. Between 1961 and 2023, total food production more than tripled, while the world population grew from 3.1 billion to 8 billion — meaning per capita food production has increased substantially.
Despite increased production, food distribution remains profoundly unequal:
| Region | Average kcal/person/day (2023) | Undernourishment Rate |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 3,750 | <2.5% |
| Europe | 3,450 | <2.5% |
| East Asia | 3,100 | <2.5% |
| South Asia | 2,500 | 14.1% |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 2,350 | 23.4% |
Key Definition: Food surplus occurs when a country produces more food than its population requires. Food deficit occurs when domestic production is insufficient to meet demand, requiring imports or food aid.
The paradox at the heart of the global food system is that it produces a surplus of calories at the global scale — enough, in principle, for everyone — yet hundreds of millions remain hungry. The explanation lies not in production but in distribution and purchasing power: food flows to those who can pay, not to those who need, so surpluses pile up (and are wasted) in rich countries while deficits persist among the poor. Roughly a third of food calories are also diverted to animal feed and a growing share to biofuels, so a large fraction of crop production never feeds people directly. This is why the food-system lens — production, distribution, trade, consumption and power — is more illuminating than a simple "do we grow enough?" question, and why the next lesson on food security focuses so heavily on access rather than availability.
Food consumption is changing as fast as production, through the nutrition transition (Popkin) — the shift, as incomes rise and societies urbanise, from traditional plant- and grain-based diets towards diets richer in animal protein, fats, sugar and processed foods. China is the clearest case: as incomes rose, average meat consumption climbed from ~20 kg/person/year in 1980 to over 60 kg today, and China now consumes roughly half the world's pork. This transition has profound geographical consequences:
The food system is not just shaped by the environment but is one of its largest drivers of change. Agriculture and land-use change account for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse-gas emissions and use about 70% of freshwater withdrawals and around half of all habitable land. The principal pathways are:
This is why food sits at the centre of the population–environment relationship: feeding 8 billion (and rising) people, and doing so with diets richer in meat, places escalating pressure on the very land, water and climate systems that production depends upon — the productivity feedback loop shown in the systems diagram above.
The Green Revolution refers to a period of rapid agricultural transformation, primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, involving the development and widespread adoption of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of staple crops (wheat, rice, maize), synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and irrigation technologies.
The mechanism of the Green Revolution is worth understanding precisely, because it is the clearest real-world vindication of Boserup. The new high-yielding varieties were bred to be semi-dwarf: shorter, stiffer stems that could carry a much heavier head of grain without falling over ("lodging"), and that responded to heavy fertiliser by putting energy into grain rather than straw. But the seeds only delivered their potential as part of a package — they required synthetic fertiliser (to feed the high yields), irrigation (reliable water), and pesticides (to protect the dense monocultures). This is precisely why the gains concentrated where that package was affordable and where water was available, and why the same varieties achieved little on the rain-fed, low-input farms of Africa. The Green Revolution thus shows both Boserup's insight — that innovation can dramatically raise the food supply under population pressure — and its limits — that the innovation was input-hungry, environmentally costly and socially uneven.
| Positive Impacts | Negative Impacts |
|---|---|
| Massive yield increases — India's wheat production rose from 12 million tonnes (1965) to 106 million tonnes (2020) | Environmental degradation — soil salinisation, groundwater depletion, chemical runoff |
| Reduced famine and hunger in Asia | Biodiversity loss — traditional crop varieties replaced by monocultures |
| Lower food prices for consumers | Widened inequality — wealthy farmers could afford inputs (seeds, fertilisers, machinery); small farmers could not |
| Contributed to economic growth and poverty reduction | Health risks from pesticide exposure among farm workers |
| Increased exports and foreign exchange earnings | Water-intensive practices depleted aquifers (e.g., Punjab, India) |
Exam Tip: The Green Revolution is a classic example of a development that produced both positive and negative outcomes. Always discuss both sides and consider who benefited and who was left behind.
A subtle but high-value point is that the Green Revolution's benefits were spatially and socially uneven — which is why it serves as evidence for both Boserup (output rose) and the critics (inequality widened). Its gains concentrated where conditions suited the new "package":
This uneven geography is precisely why a modern successor — a "second" or "evergreen" Green Revolution focused on Africa, rain-fed crops and sustainability — is a central debate in the production-strategies lesson that follows.
Key Definition: Agribusiness refers to the industrialised, large-scale approach to farming in which agriculture operates as a business, driven by profit, and involves the entire supply chain from farm inputs to food processing, distribution, and retail.
Agribusiness is characterised by:
TNCs dominate the global food system. A small number of companies control a disproportionate share of production, processing, and retail:
| Stage of Supply Chain | Dominant TNCs | Market Concentration |
|---|---|---|
| Seeds and agrochemicals | Bayer-Monsanto, Corteva, Syngenta-ChemChina | Top 4 control ~60% of global seed sales |
| Grain trading | Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus ("ABCD" companies) | Handle ~70% of global grain trade |
| Food processing | Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz | Top 10 control ~30% of processed food sales |
| Retail | Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour, Aldi, Amazon | Walmart alone generated $648 billion in revenue (2023) |
Evaluation Point: TNCs bring investment, technology, and market access, but their dominance raises concerns about farmer exploitation, environmental degradation, loss of food sovereignty, and market monopolisation. The power imbalance between large retailers and small farmers is a persistent issue in the UK and globally.
The four great grain traders — Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus — are the clearest illustration of how power concentrates at the invisible middle of the food system. Privately or family-owned and famously secretive, the "ABCD" companies are estimated to handle around 70% of the global grain trade. They sit between millions of farmers and billions of consumers, controlling storage, shipping, financing and price information at a scale no individual farmer or even most governments can match. Their strategic position lets them:
This is the geography of the corporate food regime made concrete: a handful of firms at a chokepoint in the network exercise power out of all proportion to their visibility, which is why food-security analysts watch the traders as closely as the harvests. It also frames the food-sovereignty critique explored later: control over the food system has shifted from farmers and states to a small number of globally mobile corporations.
Key Definition: Food miles measure the distance food travels from the point of production to the consumer. The concept was popularised by Tim Lang (1994) to highlight the environmental costs of transporting food globally.
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