IB Geography • Section F2
Food Systems & Spread of Disease
How physical and human processes lead to changes in food production and consumption, and incidence and spread of disease
Restored from the original AdornGeo Weebly page • syllabus order preserved
Food Production & Consumption
How physical and human processes lead to changes in food production and consumption.
Food systems begin with place. Climate, soils, relief and water shape what can be produced, while income, technology, trade, policy, culture and changing diets influence both production and consumption. The recovered AdornGeo activity now sits beside live global data so students can test these relationships rather than treat them as a list.
- Temperature, precipitation, soils, relief, pests and water availability set physical opportunities and constraints for agriculture.
- Irrigation, machinery, fertiliser, improved seeds, storage and transport can raise output, but also change energy use, environmental pressure and who benefits.
- Population, income, urbanisation, culture, advertising, trade and food prices alter the quantity and composition of food demand.
- Production and consumption are linked through global supply chains, so a change in demand in one place can transform land and livelihoods elsewhere.
- National averages hide unequal access: rising food production does not automatically remove hunger or malnutrition.
Explain a changing food system
- Complete the original Factors Affecting Food Consumption activity and sort each factor as physical, economic, social, technological or political.
- Use the calorie-supply and cereal-yield displays to select two countries with contrasting changes since 1990.
- For each country, construct a causal chain from at least one physical and three human processes to production or consumption change.
- Identify one group that benefits and one group that may lose from the change.
- Write a reasoned conclusion explaining why food availability and food security are not the same thing.
Food Systems & Sustainability
The merits of a systems approach (inputs, stores, transfers and outputs) for comparing energy efficiency, water footprints and the relative sustainability of food production systems.
A systems diagram makes flows and trade-offs visible. Students follow energy, water, nutrients, capital and labour through contrasting production systems, then compare useful outputs with waste, emissions and environmental change.
- Inputs enter the system, stores hold matter or energy, transfers move or transform them, and outputs include both products and unintended losses.
- Energy efficiency compares useful food-energy output with energy inputs; results depend on the system boundary and the unit being compared.
- A water footprint includes direct and indirect water use and can distinguish green, blue and grey water.
- Sustainability is multidimensional: a system may be productive or profitable while creating soil, water, climate, biodiversity or equity costs.
- A systems approach is valuable because it exposes interdependence, but a simplified diagram can hide power, ownership, culture and unequal impacts.
Compare two food-production systems
- Complete the recovered Food Systems activities, then choose two contrasting systems such as intensive livestock and small-scale mixed farming.
- Draw each as an input–store–transfer–output model using consistent symbols and arrows.
- Use the visible land-use and greenhouse-gas evidence to compare impacts per kilogram, then explain why a per-calorie or per-protein comparison may differ.
- Add water-footprint evidence and identify where the water is taken from and whether scarcity changes its significance.
- Evaluate the relative sustainability of the systems using environmental, economic and social criteria, not a single score.
Food miles: useful measure or distraction?
- Trace one food product from production to consumption and identify each supply-chain stage.
- Compare transport emissions with land-use change, farming inputs, processing, refrigeration and waste.
- Prepare a short judgement explaining when local food is likely to be more sustainable and when it may not be.
Diffusion of Agricultural Innovation
The importance of diffusion in the spread of agricultural innovations, including adoption and acquisition, expansion and relocation, and the role of geographic barriers.
Innovation only changes a food system when people can acquire, adapt and continue using it. The original AdornGeo notes support a geographical enquiry into how information, seeds, machinery, finance and skills spread through space and why adoption remains uneven.
- Adoption is the decision to use an innovation; acquisition is obtaining the knowledge, finance, inputs or technology needed to do so.
- Expansion diffusion spreads outward while the innovation remains strong at its source; relocation diffusion occurs when adopters move and carry it to a new place.
- Hierarchical and contagious processes often overlap as governments, companies, extension services and neighbouring farmers influence adoption.
- Distance, terrain, infrastructure, language, culture, tenure, gender inequality, cost, risk and digital access can all act as geographic barriers.
- The Green Revolution raised cereal yields in many places but its benefits and environmental costs were unevenly distributed.
Map an innovation pathway
- Use the original Diffusion of Food Innovation notes to define adoption, acquisition, expansion and relocation.
- Choose one agricultural innovation from the FAO case studies and identify its source, adopters and diffusion pathway.
- Create an annotated map showing expansion, relocation, key institutions and at least four barriers.
- Use the cereal-yield display to test whether higher yields appear after the innovation's spread, while noting that correlation is not proof of causation.
- Evaluate whether the innovation is transferable to a contrasting place without major adaptation.
Incidence & Diffusion of Disease
Geographic factors contributing to the incidence, diffusion and impacts of vector-borne and water-borne diseases.
Disease patterns emerge from interactions between pathogens, vectors, water, climate, infrastructure, mobility and vulnerability. The original presentation task, class resources and diffusion activity are now embedded together so students can build a located disease study rather than collect disconnected facts.
- Incidence measures new cases in a population over a stated period; prevalence measures all existing cases at a point or during a period.
- Vector-borne disease depends on the ecology of a carrier such as a mosquito as well as human exposure, immunity, prevention and healthcare.
- Water-borne disease incidence rises where contaminated water, inadequate sanitation, flooding, displacement and weak treatment systems overlap.
- Disease can diffuse contagiously through local contact, hierarchically through connected settlements and by relocation through migration and travel.
- Impacts vary with age, income, occupation, gender, health systems and governance, so the same pathogen produces unequal outcomes between places.
Build a detailed disease example
- Use the recovered presentation task to choose one vector-borne or water-borne disease and define its pathogen, transmission route and symptoms.
- Map its distribution and identify the physical and human factors that explain high-incidence areas and exceptions.
- Trace diffusion at more than one scale and classify each pathway as contagious, hierarchical or relocation diffusion.
- Explain social, economic and demographic impacts using located evidence, then evaluate two management strategies.
- Compare your study with one class presentation and identify which conclusions are transferable and which are place-specific.
Malaria and cholera comparison
- Construct a two-column comparison of a vector-borne disease (malaria) and a water-borne disease (cholera).
- For each, connect climate and physical geography to settlement, infrastructure, poverty, mobility and governance.
- Conclude by explaining why environmental suitability alone cannot predict disease impact.
Malaria: a vector-borne disease system
Malaria transmission depends on the overlap between the Plasmodium parasite, Anopheles mosquitoes, suitable temperature and water conditions, exposed populations and uneven prevention and treatment. Its geography therefore changes with climate, land use, settlement, mobility and public-health capacity.
- Map the tropical and subtropical distribution without assuming every warm place has equal incidence.
- Connect mosquito ecology to rainfall, standing water, altitude, seasonality and land-use change.
- Examine how housing, bed nets, spraying, diagnosis, treatment and health systems alter vulnerability.
- Evaluate why management success differs between and within countries.
Cholera: a water-borne disease system
Cholera is transmitted through food or water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae. Outbreak risk rises where safe water and sanitation fail, particularly during conflict, displacement, flooding and rapid unplanned urban growth.
- Trace contamination from water source through storage, distribution and consumption.
- Distinguish the physical trigger from the infrastructure and governance conditions that permit transmission.
- Connect rapid rehydration and surveillance to reduced mortality.
- Evaluate prevention through water, sanitation and hygiene rather than treatment alone.