Agriculture, food security and rural livelihoods
This domain tests farming systems, the rural economy and the four pillars of food security. Questions ask you to interpret yields and food balances, evaluate interventions such as the Green Revolution or land reform, and explain why food insecurity can exist where food is available.
Farming systems and rural livelihoods
- Classify farms as subsistence or commercial, intensive or extensive, irrigated or rain-fed; shifting cultivation is a low-input system that requires long fallow periods.
- Productivity depends on inputs (seed, fertiliser, water, labour), extension advice, credit, storage and market access - not on effort alone.
- Land tenure determines whether farmers invest: secure title encourages terracing, trees and soil conservation; insecure tenure discourages them.
- The Green Revolution raised wheat and rice yields through high-yielding varieties, irrigation and fertiliser, mainly in Asia; critics note dependence on purchased inputs, water depletion and uneven benefits between large and small farmers.
- Rural livelihoods diversify: off-farm work, remittances, livestock and processing often matter as much as crop sales.
Food security: four pillars
- Availability: production, imports and stocks.
- Access: purchasing power, markets, transport and entitlements.
- Utilisation: food safety, clean water, sanitation and nutrition knowledge.
- Stability: reliability across seasons and shocks. Sen's entitlement approach shows famine can occur with food on the shelves if people lose the means to obtain it - through lost wages, collapsed prices for their produce or failed entitlements.
Worked example
A country produces 2.4 million tonnes of cereal, imports 0.6 million, exports 0.2 million and adds 0.1 million to stocks, with a population of 30 million. Available for consumption = 2.4 + 0.6 − 0.2 − 0.1 = 2.7 million tonnes; per person = 2.7m ÷ 30m = 0.09 tonnes, or 90 kg per year. Compare this with a commonly used requirement of roughly 150 kg to judge adequacy, then argue why national averages can hide access failures.
Traps that cost marks
Equating availability with food security; assuming famine proves a harvest failure; confusing yield per hectare with total output; assuming cash crops always reduce food security, when the income effect may improve access.