Food security

Annotations:

• Area of high inequality/structural poverty. ⇒ High levels of food insecurity despite productive, flat land + large aquifer. 75% rural population = tenant/marginal land owners => depend on labour (+ own subsistence?) monsoon patterns becoming more unpredictable - affected rice (paddy crop) drought finally pushes many into food - rich farmers pump ground water. insecurity -> men migrate to cities and send sporadic income, women exploited for wages but need money to feed the household.

Annotations:

• 984 famine - media portrayed as due to a drought, but there was more to it. Bengal famine - peak of ww2, colonial narrative puts it down to drought. there was a drought but there had been worse, but it was actually down to combination of drought, pre-existing inequalities in the area, hoarding by grain traders = rising prices, British failed to give aid, much grain was diverted to the front lines (war) = more price rises. Mostly labouring poor who suffered - depended on purchasing food from the market. - grounded in colonial policy, poor planning, socio-economic inequalities.  

Annotations:

• 2020 study: complex agro-ecological history - highly fertile + productive region since ancient times - used for sedentary agriculture. stresses (demographic, biophysical, political, economic) since 19th century reversed this Decades led to severe land degradation. farmers driven to steeper mountain slopes. soil moisture retention undermines, loss of top soil intensifies. restoration since 1990's Lower-lying areas are have responded less well to schemes, terraces (cut down soil degradation), check dams, small-scale water storage to irrigate in dry season. Yields double in a decade = better soil fertility. Also young people move to city due to higher cost of living - better access to money. Lower-lying areas are have responded less well to schemes being drier than mountain areas. Conflict in the area since may have affected outcomes. 

1. social resilience - communities - (e.g. access to irrigation changes, crop insurance)
2. ecological resilience - ecosystems ... disturbances - e.g. through species/functional diversity

1. - v. to climate change linked to one’s capacity to adaptt
   1. - class, gender, social position affects the resources accessible for those coping with stress
      1. - important ones: access to livelihood resources/assets e.g. land, irrigation, social networks, fertile land, resilient land, bank accoun

1. quick efficient, expensive, require technology, material taken form other species, within a species, delete, insert, repress a gene.
   1. Requires basic genetic diveristy.
      1. Commericial varieties do not have genetic diversity. Uniformity good fro convenience e.g. harvest on same day however all have same vulnerabilities = risky.
      2. Land races + crop wild relatives have diveristy. However landrace decline has been evident over the years (see example china)
      3. PARADOX: modern cultivars outproduce land races so farmers switch and landraces decline. But genetic diversity is required to breed new improved homozygous crop varieties

1. 1) Law of segregation
2. Law of independent assortment

1. Some specie are multipurpose e.g. for milk and meat

1. Svalbard gene bank: under threat from melting top soils.
2. focussed of 30 top crops for diverity in gene-banks.
   1. Diversity is not spread/equal - many crops have no stored material.
3. Orthodox species can be frozen. Recalsident ones cannot.
4. World rice seed bank in the Phillipines