Page 5 - Eco-Schools Wales Newsletter, Spring 1 2023 - english

Food

There’s no denying that food is important in many ways and central to our

lives. For example, food has an enormous impact on our health, our daily

routines often revolve around mealtime, and food forms a significant part of

cultural identities around the world. However, the processes that operate to
get food on our table impact the planet more than we may think.

“Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning,

you’ve depended on more than half of the world”

- Martin Luther King Jr, 1967

We could take this quote to mean Another interpretation could be to

the literal land area of the world we mean the people of the world that

depend on, since of the 106 million we depend on to work the land and

km2 of habitable land in the world the seas to grow and produce the
(not covered in glaciers or barren), 2.5 billion tonnes of food the world

nearly half is used for agriculture. consumes annually.

That is, to grow food for us to consume,

or crops to feed animals that in turn

produce food for us.

Let’s take a look at some of the implications of feeding the 8 billion people on

Earth…