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FULL Geography 3445F Class Notes
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GEO3445F COURSE NOTES, TONY WEIS, WESTERN ONTARIO UNIVERSITY
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Geo 3445FUneven bounty and Vulnerability
1. Malnourishment and obesity
a. Access to food is a huge inequality
i. Majority in sub-saharan + south asia
1. Majority rural
ii. Measured by 800 million to a billion people are malnourished
1. Dependent on food price spikes
2. Defining hunger: caloric intake? (experts say it is not good
enough)
a. Hidden hunger: micronutrient deficiencies
(vitamins/minerals)
b. Global burden of Disease
i. Diets have a central role in sugar of non-communicable disease (NCDs -
cardiovascular/diabetes, etc.)
1. Average waistline in US grew an inch within on decade (1999 -
2012)
2. Determining global obesity: surging worldwide in fast
industrializing countries (China, Mexico, US, canada)
a. Obesity could be global pandemic (WHO) - 2 billion
obese/overweight (grown within 3-4 decades)
b. Population of malnourished obese
i. Share of obese/overwight who are malnourished
(too much claories wiythout getting essential
vitamins/minerals)
1. Could occur in developing/developed
countries
c. Climate change is exacerbating this issue
d. Covert famine
i. Lots of food being produced (enough food to feed at least 10-11 billion
ppl)
2. Food import dependency = cheap surplus
a. Low-income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDCs)
i. Poorest countries = highest population with food insecurity who rely on
agriculture as a livelihood
1. sub-saharan + south asia
2. Import more food than export even though major shares of
population work in agriculture
ii. Temperate breadbasket
1. Very small % of world agricultural population
a. Large share of food production comes from small
agricultural population
i. Under 1% of Canada population work in agriculture
, ii. 125000 makeup vast majority of food production in
America
b. Intense pressure to tell farmers to grow in scale (get big or
get out)
b. Pressure on agrarian livelihood
i. 84% of world farm are less than 2 Hectares & farming still, by far, the
biggest livelihood
ii. Depeasantization: peasant livelihoods who are put under pressure to not
become a peasants
1. Move into cities within their own countries
a. Move into slums
i. between 2003 - 2040, increase of 1 billion people in
slums
ii. Huge social question bound up in future of agrarian
livelihoods
c. Rising volatility in world food markets
i. Low-income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) are affected the most by
changing prices of food (very vulnerable)
1. 1/10 canadians are considered food insecure
a. Cannot consistently afford food
2. Russia/Ukraine issue: huge exporters on food & fertilizers which
are being affected drastically
3. Biological Narrowing/Pseudo-diversity
a. Biodiverse farms - rooted in bioregions
i. Biological simplification & standardization
1. Agrarian systems built on wide variety of species
a. Roots of diverse cultures and cuisines
b. Biological narrowing in crops: 4 crops make up ½ of arable
land
i. Rice, Wheat, Soy beans, corn (biggest crop planted
on world scale)
1. Soy came up as the newest
c. Biological narrowing in livestock: 3 livestock species (90%
of livestock production comes from chicken, pigs and
cows)
i. 70% comes from chicken and pigs
1. Ducks are on verge and turkeys to some
extent
ii. Almost ⅓ of arable land is moving into livestock
production
1. Grains (corn) and seeds (soy) are being
turned into livestock
d. Vast majority of modern supermarket is actually very
narrow (30 crops and 3 animal species actually being sold)
, i. Not very diverse (supermarket is pseudo-diverse)
1. Rising distance and durability of food and
opacity (hard to make sense of)
a. Conceals radical narrowing of power
and control
2. Food from nowhere: consumption and
brand loyalty increasing detached from
space (idea of not understanding where
your food came from)
a. Eating local foods but also using
product that is produced locally
3. Trajectory of agriculture/food (radical
transformation of food cultures/cuisines)
a. From anchor of societes states and
cultures over millennia TOWARDS a
tenuous component of corporate
global sourcing strategies
Domestication, Dispersion and biophysical organizing imperatives
1. Neolithic Revolution
a. Modern human species: 180,000 years ago (holocene (warm/stable
climate)/12,000 years ago is when agriculture expanded)
i. Neolithic started around 10,000 years ago with about 5-8 million people of
population → slow but steady growth of population increase
1. Even at turn of 20th century, vast population of humans were rural
and agrarian
ii. Importance of domesticating animals, increasing idea of sedentary
societies - movement of East-West as well as fertile crescent
1. Big step beyond hunting and gathering (gathering/hunting at low
densities → few artifacts = limited archaeological evidence),
however:
a. It was clear that vast array of cultural adaptations over
millennia
b. It was clear that ways of life contingent on holistic
ecological knowledge with limited social hierarchies
(gender equality was a norm)
i. Emergence of agriculture led to gender inequality
c. Still capable of affecting significant ecological changes
i. Humans moving to new areas led to driving species
to extinction (elimination of large animals)
ii. Creating fires which helped them eat and stay in
cooler climates, while also using fire to change
environments to their favor
1. Grasslands better for preferred prey
b. HOW/WHY?
, i. Contexts of relative desperation/abundance to create agriculture?
1. Desperation: after other sources of food as animals would become
overexploited (overhunting of animals could have led to a pressure
to develop new food source)
a. Not possible as that process would have to take a lot of
time
2. Abundance: emerge in fertile river valleys, amid relative bountiful
food = time for experimentation
ii. Degree of serendipity (by accident) or intentionally (on purpose)?
1. Serendipity: benefit from scattered seeds of annual self
propagating plants that had been gathered and consumed
a. Young of hunted animal species gradually absorbed
human groups
2. Intentionally: after millennia of harvesting wild plants and hunting
wild animals, knew enough about their physiology and behavior
a. Recognize how cereals could be grown from seed
b. Manipulating animal breeding and selects for particular
traits
iii. Beneficial for humans?
1. Yes: organization of more reliable (but not necessarily more at
first) food supplies
a. Foundation of permanent settlements and rise of complex
civilizations (frees some from food-getting challenges)
b. More protection from elements of wild animals
2. No: Rise of new gender/class inequalities
a. More work vs the original affluent society
i. Sahlins: few possessions did not equal poverty at
the time before agriculture
ii. 3-5 hrs/day to get food = rich in time/leisure
iv. Implications for environment and live animals
1. War against our own environment with drastic alterations of
species (great amplification of human violence against other
species)
2. Cycle of ecological expansion and degradation
v. Domesticated Animals
1. Radically new interspecies relations (dogs were domesticated
first) - cobenefit (enhances hunting prowess and human security)
a. care for domesticated animals: enhanced food supplies,
shelter, protection from predators (population growth =
evolutionary success?)
i. Cattle is the biggest mammalian biomass on Earth,
and then Humans
b. Exploitation of domesticated animals: reproductive outputs
(skin/wool/down; flesh)
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