Chapter 12

To improve our ability to adapt to climate change and other threats, it is important to ____.

diversify the species that we use for food

Raising animals in feedlots leads to ____.

less land use

If a farmer has continued problems with flooding, then ____.

no-till farming would not be feasible

A second green revolution has been taking place since 1967, based on ____.

fast-growing rice and wheat

One way to improve American food security is ____.

to develop the use cell cultures to provide meat

Plantation agriculture uses heavy equipment along with large amounts of financial capital, fossil fuels, water, commercial inorganic fertilizers, and pesticides.

False

Spiders kill far fewer crop-eating insects every year than humans do by using insecticides.

False

To be considered organic, a farm must avoid using pesticides or herbicides but can use antibiotics.

False

To improve industrialized agriculture, it will be important to focus on using single crops that have been carefully developed for valuable traits, rather than using a wide variety of crops.

False

With industrialized food production, how many units of nonrenewable fossil fuel energy are required to produce each unit of energy put on the table in the United States?

10

What percentage of the food products currently on U.S. supermarket shelves contains some form of genetically modified food or ingredients?

80%

What occurs in alley cropping?

Crops are planted in strips between trees and shrubs.

Which of these actions can we take to reduce desertification?

Decrease human contribution to climate change

A major difference between chronic undernutrition and chronic malnutrition is that people with chronic malnutrition cannot obtain enough calories whereas people with chronic undernutrition can

False

Climate change will make it easier to expand green revolutions.

False

Crops that have to be planted from seed every year are known as perennial crops.

False

Hundreds of thousands of children under 6 years of age go blind each year because of a lack of iron.

False

What is the largest cause of soil erosion?

Flowing water

About two-thirds of the world's human population survives primarily by eating one or more of the three grain crops. What are these three grains?

Rice, wheat, and corn

Which of the following is true of India?

The dramatic decrease in the number of rice varieties planted puts the food supply at risk.

Famine is a severe shortage of food in an area and which can result in mass starvation, many deaths, economic chaos, and social disruption.

True

Leaving crop residues on the ground can help to protect land by helping to preserve topsoil.

True

One benefit to polyculture is that can have the environmental benefit of reducing fertilizer runoff.

True

Over the past 30 years, total global meat consumption has decreased significantly.

True

Traditional subsistence agriculture combines energy from the sun with the labor of humans and draft animals to produce enough crops for a farm family's survival, with little left over to sell or store as a reserve for hard times.

True

Irrigation is used frequently despite its limitations because it ____.

boosts crop productivity on farms

Efforts to reduce food insecurity will be most effective if they focus on ____

efforts in less-developed countries where this is most common

The term overnutrition refers to ____.

energy intake exceeding energy use

One way to help address climate change is to ____.

find ways to reduce methane emissions from cows

With traditional subsistence agriculture, farmers increase their crop yields by ____.

increasing their inputs of human and draft-animal labor

Compared with the threat of undernutrition, the threat of overnutrition ____.

is worsening and contributing to lower life expectancies in developed countries

To reduce the risk of ____, people living in dry climates need to work to reduce overuse of irrigation.

salinization

One way to maintain soil fertility is through ____.

soil conservation

Plantation agriculture is a form of high-input agriculture that involves growing cash crops and is primarily used in __

tropical, less-developed countries

Each year, at least 250,000 children under 6 years of age go blind from a lack of ____.

vitamin A