Food For All
Food For All
Go to the Lesson Outline: Why do we need to grow our own food?
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Why do we need to grow our own food?
Why do we need to grow our own food?
Until about 12,000 years ago humans were hunter-gatherers. Our ancestors foraged and hunted for food. This meant they were mostly nomadic and moved from place to place in search of food. Then around 12,000 years ago we have evidence that human’s way of life changed and we started the development of agriculture.
Agriculture includes the domestication of animals, which means feeding, supplying water, fencing (at least some of the time) and protecting animals so we can have a supply of meat, milk, hair/wool all year round. Cattle, sheep, goats and pigs were some of the first species domesticated. Farmers bred the most friendly animals together and soon these animals became tame and could be worked by humans.
Agriculture also includes the farming of crops, which means collecting seed, preparing soil, watering, adding nutrients and removing pests and weeds from areas where food plants were grown. Wheat, barley, chickpeas, figs, peas and lentils were some of the first plants farmed by humans in the Middle East, followed by rice in Asia, and maize, tomatoes and squash in the Americas.
Our ancestors then had a reliable source of food all year round and this led to permanent settlements; villages into towns, and into cities. The abundance of food also meant the numbers of humans increased dramatically, from around 5 million 10,000 years ago to 8 billion today.
With the massive increase in the number of humans there was a massive increase in the amount of food needed. Agriculture usually enables there to be enough food, but weather has a huge impact on production. Floods, droughts and pests/diseases can wipe out crops and cause famine.
An example of this was the Potato Famine in Ireland between 1845-1852 where a fungus infected the potatoes that the population relied on for food. Around 1 million Irish died from starvation over this time and a million more left.
Another example was how the Spanish Flu Pandemic affected Samoa in 1918. 22% of the population of Samoa died and this meant there were fewer people to plant and care for crops. This lead to a famine in 1919 due to the lack of crops.
During WW1, WW2 and the Great Depression many governments promoted growing your own food to provide for you and your family during rationing and to feed the soldiers. Public parks in cities were dug over and crops planted too.
Recently, Aotearoa has had it’s food supply affected. During the COVID-19 pandemic some fresh foods were difficult to get as the people who usually picked the crops were workers from overseas who were not allowed in the country. Northland was hit with floods and cyclone Gabrielle wiped out half the kūmara crop in 2023. This led to record high kūmara prices, up to $15 per kilo. 10 tonnes of onions were washed from their fields during flooding (see picture on the left) in Auckland and this led to increased prices too.
All of these factors saw an increase in people wanting to grow their own food - to make food supply more certain and to cut down household costs. During the first COVID-19 Level 4 lockdown online vegetable seed companies saw demand for seeds increase 10 times what they would normally see. There is also evidence that gardening is good for your mental health and can reduce stress in times of crisis.
So how can Science help home gardeners and commercial growers grow more food?
More on Growing our Own Food
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The Big Question
The Big Question
Food quality and availabilty now, more than ever, is an issue for humans. A growing population, global pandemics and global warming have led to food shortages.
Science can look at possible solutions to this by working out ways that plants can grow us more food. This could be on a worldwide scale or in our own home gardens. By increasing photosynthesis, increasing germination rate or by increasing the size and number fruit produced by a plant, more food can be grown.
So our big question is:
How can we get plants to produce more food for us to eat?
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