Zusammenfassung der Ressource
GCSE AQA Biology 3 Food Production
- Efficiency of food production can be improved by:
- Reducing the number of stages in the food chain
- Less energy/biomass as you move up food chain
- For area of land - can produce more food more humans
by growing crops rather than having grazing animals
- People do need varied diet (demand for meat)
& some land is unsuitable for growing crops
- Restricting energy lost by farm animals
- Animals often intensively farmed - kept close together
indoors in small pens, they're warm & can't move about
- Saves them wasting energy on movement & stops
them giving out energy as heat - makes transfer of
energy from feed to animal more efficient
- Makes things cheaper
for farmer & consumer
- Developing new food sources like mycoprotein
- Mycoprotein: Protein from fungi (Fusarium is main
source) - used to make meat substitutes for veg meals
- Grown in fermenters, using glucose syrup as food
(obtained by digesting maize starch with enzymes)
- Fungus respires
aerobically - with
nitrogen (as ammonia)
- Important to prevent other
microorganisms growing - fermenter
initially sterilised, incoming nutrients
heat sterilised & air supply is filtered
- Mycoprotein harvested & purified
- Good in developing
countries
- Problems with efficient
food production
- Some people think forcing animals to live
in unnatural/uncomfortable conditions is
cruel (growing demand for organic meat)
- Crowded conditions create favourable
environment for spread of diseases
- To prevent disease -
animals are given antibiotics
Anmerkungen:
- When animals are eaten, antibiotics enter humans - allows microbes that infect humans to develop immunity
- Animals need to be kept warm -
using power from fossil fuels
- Fish stocks are getting low but
fish continues to feed animals
that are intensively farmed
- Food distribution
causes problems
- Some foods have lots of 'food
miles' - transported a long way
- Can be expensive &
bad for environment
- Overfishing is decreasing fish stocks
- Less fish for us to eat
- Need to maintain fish stocks at level where they
continue to breed (sustainable food production)
- Can do this by:
- Fishing quotas - limits on
number & size of fish (prevents
certain species being overfished)
- Net size - different limits
on mesh size of fish net
(reduce no. of unwanted
fish - help them escape)