Geography of food

The geography of food is a field of human geography. It focuses on patterns of food production and consumption on the local to global scale. Tracing these complex patterns helps geographers understand the unequal relationships between developed and developing countries in relation to the innovation, production, transportation, retail and consumption of food. It is also a topic that is becoming increasingly charged in the public eye. The movement to reconnect the 'space' and 'place' in the food system is growing, spearheaded by the research of geographers.

Spatial variations in food production and consumption practices have been noted for thousands of years. In fact, Plato commented on the destructive nature of agriculture when he referred to the soil erosion from the mountainsides surrounding Athens, stating "[In previous years] Athens yielded far more abundant produce. In comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body; all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left". Societies beyond those of ancient Greece have struggled under the pressure to feed expanding populations. The people of Easter Island, the Maya of Central America and most recently the inhabitants of Montana have been experiencing similar difficulties in production due to several interconnecting factors related to land and resource management. These events have been extensively studied by geographers and other interested parties (the study of food has not been confined to a single discipline, and has received attention from a huge range of diverse sources).^{[citation needed]}

Modern geographers initially focused on food as an economic activity, especially in terms of agricultural geography. It was not until recently that geographers have turned their attention to food in a wider sense: "The emergence of an agro-food geography that seeks to examine issues along the food chain or within systems of food provision derives, in part, from the strengthening of political economy approaches in the 1980s".

Food has received attention from both the physical sciences and the social sciences because it is a bridge between the natural and social worlds. Some of the earliest numerical data about food production come from bureaucratic sources linked to the ancient civilizations of Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. Traders have also been influential in documenting food networks. Early Indian merchants and traders mapped the location of trading posts associated with food production nodes.

Food production was the first element of food to receive extensive attention from geographers in the field of cultural geography, particularly in agricultural geography.

Globally, the production of food is unequal. This is because there are two main components involved in sustenance production that are also distributed irregularly. These components are the environmental capacity of the area, and the human capacity. Environmental capacity is its ability 'to accommodate a particular activity or rate of an activity without unacceptable impact'. The climate, soil types, and availability of water affect it. Human capacity, in relation to food production, is the size of the population and the amount of agricultural skill within that population. When these two are at ideal levels and partnered with financial capital, the creation of intense agricultural infrastructure is possible, as the Green Revolution clearly portrays.

Simultaneously, the ability of a country to produce food is being severely impacted by a plethora of other factors:

Pests are becoming resistant to pesticides, or pesticides may be killing off the useful and necessary insects. Examples of this happening occur around the globe. Tanzania experienced a particularly horrible infection of armyworms in 2005. At the infections peak, there were over 1000 larvae per square meter. In 2009, Liberia experienced a state of emergency when invading African armyworm caterpillars began what became a regional food crisis. The caterpillars traveled through 65 towns and 20,000 people were forced to leave their homes, markets, and farms. Losses like this can cost millions to billions, depending on size and duration, and have severe effects on food security. The FAO has created an international team, the Plant Production and Protection Division, which is attempting to 'reduce reliance on pesticides' and 'demonstrate that pesticide use often can be reduced considerably without affecting yields or farmer profits' in these, and other hard-struck areas.