Week 9: Food and globalization

So basically last week’s lecture was on food security, which is having access to healthy food (not just any food. So if you had access toan endless supply of McDonald’s, but nothing else, then you don’t have food security).
It was something I’d never even considered until about two weeks ago. Food security is something I take for granted, but then I found out that actually, quite a lot of people in Sydney don’t have food security. This was mind-boggling to me – we live in a first world country, for goodness’ sake. This isn’t something that happens to people overseas in countries we’ve never been to, let alone heard of (hey, some of those Central African countries are really quite obscure), but something that happens to fellow Sydneysiders. Chew on THAT. (Food pun #1)

Food security facts, taken from a survey of households in Warwick Farm, Villawood and Rosemeadow/Ambarvale in Sydney’s South-West:
• 21.9% of households have experienced food insecurity
• 30% of households with children were food insecure
• 45% of single parent households were food insecure.

Food for thought from the lecture (food pun #2):
• Australians throw 3.3million tonnes of food away a year.
• In an attempt to increase food yield, large quantities of fertilizer are used.
• Technology has resulted in the destruction of traditional food systems and subsistence agriculture.

It touches on with the theme from week 7: sustainable development. How can we keep up with the increasing demands of the population without creating more long-term problems? Beatriz spoke about the fact that at the moment, food security in Chian is not as big a problem as was previously expected, because many people in China actually grow their own food. But as China urbanizes and more people move to the city, how will China be able to keep up its food production? Can the world develop technologically and still satisfy that most basic of human needs, the need for food?




Photo: ~Philip-Scammell via deviantART