Geography of food

In comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body; all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left".

The people of Easter Island, the Maya of Central America and most recently the inhabitants of Montana have been experiencing similar difficulties in production due to several interconnecting factors related to land and resource management.

[citation needed] Modern geographers initially focused on food as an economic activity, especially in terms of agricultural geography.

When these two are at ideal levels and partnered with financial capital, the creation of intense agricultural infrastructure is possible, as the Green Revolution clearly portrays.

In 2009, Liberia experienced a state of emergency when invading African armyworm caterpillars began what became a regional food crisis.

Hydroelectric dams and mega-canal projects are becoming the new standard for countries like Egypt that can no longer depend on rainfall or natural flood cycles.

Policy responses to these events could be implemented in order to strengthen the socio-economic growth, human health statuses, and environmental sustainability of these areas.

[8] Aeolian erosion largely effects deserted areas, reducing air quality, polluting water sources, and limiting fertility of nearby land.

[citation needed] Climate change is creating more extreme weather patterns, and agricultural practices are estimated to cause from 10 to 12 percent of greenhouses gas emissions.

Conservative estimates place the shift of traditional crops (maize, grain, potatoes) northward at 50 to 70 kilometers a decade.

Variations in diet and consumption practices on global and regional scales became the focus of geographers and economists with the vastly expanding population and widely publicized famines of the 1960s, and the food riots of 2007-2008 in 60 different countries.

Due in part to these events, differences in the caloric intake of food and the composition of an average diet have been estimated and mapped for many countries since the 1960s.

[14] Globally, consumption is still extremely uneven, with areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa still having some of the lowest rates of caloric intake per capita, often falling below the recommended levels.