Feeding the World
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Food is one of the most fundamental parts of our lives and is therefore a significant focus
of the geographer's perspective on the world. There is almost no aspect of world regional
geography that does not somehow relate to food, whether it's the processes of trade that allow
food to travel great distances before being consumed, distinct regional food cultures and food
taboos, or the way technologies change the human-environment relationship. The units in "Feeding
the World" focus on both the international processes that allow food to travel the globe and the
changes in agricultural technology that have enabled greater amounts of food to be produced than
ever before. In each of the units, key political issues are considered. In the "Geography of
Breakfast" units (also included in the "Globalizing World" theme), we consider the ways
consumers and farmers who are separated by great distances are linked together at the breakfast
table. A great deal has to happen before you can pour your morning cup of coffee or slice a
banana onto a bowl of cereal, and these units-on coffee production in Central America and
the U.S.-EU "banana trade war" of the late 1990s-illustrate the ways food links us to other
parts of the world in ways we don't often realize. Two other units examine changes in
agricultural technology by exploring the "Green Revolutions" and the question of whether
China will be able to feed itself in the future. In both of these units, the key issue at
stake is how new technologies in agriculture, developed in response to growing populations,
also have broad-reaching social, cultural, and political consequences. These consequences
are the subject of much debate, particularly in the case of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) and other kinds of biotechnology.
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