Food Supply

For most of human history, the size of the population was capped by how much food people could gather and hunt. Then came agriculture, and with it machines, fertilisers, pesticides and selective breeding, tools that let a single farmer feed hundreds of people. The result is a booming population, but also a heavy bill for the environment.

In this lesson you will describe the five main ways humans have boosted food production, then weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of two of the most important: large-scale monocultures of crops and intensive livestock production. The skill here is balanced evaluation, giving both sides and reaching a judgement, which is exactly what examiners reward.