• Farming can be classified in four paired categories: arable/pastoral, commercial/subsistence, extensive/intensive, nomadic/sedentary — and mixed farms combine crops and livestock.
• Physical factors (climate, soil, relief, drainage) and human factors (tradition, subsidies, transport, farm size, market demand, capital) decide what type of farming happens where.
• Every farm works as a system: inputs → processes → outputs — and farming systems change the ecosystems they sit in.
• Case Study: Hill sheep farming in Cumbria, UK — a real example of extensive, commercial, pastoral, sedentary farming under pressure.
• Food shortages have both natural causes (flooding, drought, disease, pests, cyclones) and human causes (war, rising prices, corruption, population growth, soil degradation).
• Food shortages cause undernutrition, malnutrition, wasting, social unrest, migration, and economic decline.
• Solutions range from food aid and irrigation to GM crops, the Green Revolution, mechanisation, fertilisers, and appropriate technology — each with real trade-offs.
• Case Study: Yemen — a live example of how conflict, drought, pests, corruption, and population growth combine into a severe food crisis.

Before you can describe any farm, you need the vocabulary to categorise it. Examiners love asking you to classify a farm using these four pairs — think of them as four separate yes/no questions you can ask about any farm on Earth:

A farm that grows crops and keeps livestock together is called a mixed farm.

Physical factors are the natural conditions a farmer can't easily change — they're the "hand you're dealt". Here's how each one works, with the actual numbers from your syllabus:

Every crop has a minimum temperature threshold below which it simply won't grow, or will grow badly. Example: wheat needs 21–24°C to give a good yield. Grow wheat somewhere colder and you'll get a poor harvest even with perfect soil and rain.

This is the number of days between sowing and harvest. Barley only needs about 90 days — so it suits places with short summers. Rice needs about 120 days — so it needs a longer warm season. This is why you can't just swap crops between regions; the calendar has to fit.

Both the total annual rainfall and when it falls across the year matter. A place could get plenty of rain overall but if it all falls in one short season, that limits which crops will thrive.

Altitude affects temperature (higher = colder), and steepness affects whether machinery can even be used. Even within one small valley, a south-facing slope (in the Northern Hemisphere) gets more direct sun and is warmer than a north-facing one — so farmers might grow different crops on each side of the same hill.

Crops need deep, fertile soil to put roots down and draw nutrients from. Where soils are thin and infertile, grazing animals (which don't need deep roots) tends to dominate instead.

Most crops need well-drained land — if water can't escape, roots become waterlogged and effectively "drown" from lack of oxygen.

Human factors are the decisions and economics layered on top of the physical landscape:

This is one of the most important ideas in the whole chapter, and it's a guaranteed exam topic. A farm isn't just "a field" — geographers treat it as a system, exactly like a machine: things go in (inputs), things happen to them (processes), and things come out (outputs).

Farming doesn't just take from nature — it actively reshapes the ecosystem it sits inside:

• Monocultures (growing just one crop over a huge area) reduce biodiversity because they limit the variety of food available to wild animals.
• Nutrient cycling becomes dependent on either natural inputs (manure) or artificial ones (fertilisers) rather than happening naturally.
• Ecosystems get modified by seed, fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, and machinery inputs — none of which existed there naturally.
• Where food webs shrink, the total amount of biomass (living material) in that ecosystem shrinks too.

This is your go-to real-world example for a whole exam question on farming systems. Learn the structure below — examiners reward students who can quote specific facts, not vague generalisations.

The relief of Cumbria's land limits what farming is possible — lowland areas support cattle grazing and limited crops, but the uplands are dominated by sheep, with around 3 million sheep farmed across the area. This is an example of extensive, commercial, pastoral, sedentary farming.

Physical: short growing season (unsuitable for most crops), high rainfall (over 1500mm/year in many areas), thin acidic upland soils, steep slopes.
Human: quad bikes and sheds for lambing, low labour (often just one person plus extra help when needed), subsidies (without them many farmers would make a loss), winter feed (needed when snow covers the uplands and grass provides insufficient nutrients).

Processes: monitoring the sheep, lambing, dipping (to reduce parasites/maggots), shearing.
Outputs: lambs bred for meat and slaughtered before 1 year old (usually 6–8 months), wool from shearing, mutton (meat from sheep over 1 year old).

• Often not profitable — relies on subsidies or diversification to survive.
• Foot and mouth disease outbreak (2001) — nearly 500,000 sheep had to be culled to stop the spread.
• Fuel, machinery, and feed costs have all risen.
• Lamb prices fluctuate with the market, directly affecting income.
• Wool prices average only about 32p per kilo — less than the cost of shearing, meaning shearing actually loses the farmer money.
• Fewer young people want to become sheep farmers.
• Since leaving the EU, the UK plans to phase out subsidies and replace them with payments for environmental work instead.

• Diversifying into campsites and holiday cottages.
• Converting to organic farming (e.g. Low Sizergh Farm, South Cumbria) to earn higher prices for organic meat and wool.
• Taking on additional part-time jobs alongside farming.
• Switching to sheep breeds that shed their fleece naturally (no shearing needed) — though this isn't always suitable for harsh upland conditions.

Here's the global scale of the problem, straight from the syllabus data — these are exactly the kind of statistics examiners love to see quoted back at them:

• In 2015, world leaders committed to ending world hunger by 2030.
• The UN estimates the number of people in "hunger emergencies" rose from 135 million in 2019 to 345 million in 2022 — more than double in three years.
• Global food prices are 23% higher than in 2021.
• World grain reserves are lower than they've been in 14 years.
• Women and girls make up 70% of people suffering from hunger.

Food shortages create a chain reaction of problems — not just hunger itself, but a whole set of knock-on social and economic effects:

No single solution fixes food shortages — that's the exam trap. Every solution below comes with real trade-offs, and top answers always weigh advantages against disadvantages rather than just listing benefits.

Can be short-term (after a disaster/crisis) or long-term (given to an LEDC government to distribute over time). Delivered by MEDCs, often via organisations like the World Food Programme (WFP), or NGOs such as Oxfam and Save The Children.

Artificially watering crops — success depends on the irrigation type used, e.g. surface irrigation or drip irrigation.

Genetic material is altered to make crops disease/pest resistant, higher-yielding, or drought resistant.

A movement that developed high-yield varieties of major food crops — including wheat, maize, and rice.

Teaching farmers sustainable farming methods.

Using tractors and other machinery to complete farming tasks.

Fertilisers boost yields by adding nitrogen to soil; pesticides kill or deter pests from eating crops.

Simple, sustainable methods suited to local conditions — e.g. contour ploughing or intercropping.

Yemen sits in the south-east of the Arabian Peninsula and is your named example of a country experiencing a severe, ongoing food crisis. It has a mainly hot desert climate, with a more temperate climate in the western mountains. Summer temperatures reach 40°C with little rainfall; winters are cooler (25–35°C) but still dry.

Crops grown include millet, corn, wheat, barley, and sorghum, plus export crops like coffee, cotton, and fruit. Over 73% of the population relies on agriculture as their main source of income — meaning any disruption to farming devastates livelihoods, not just food supply.

• The Yemeni economy has declined — mostly in the crop-growing south-west.
• In 2016, farm produce losses totalled $964.5 million.
• Yemen became dependent on imports for 90% of its grain supplies — much of it from Ukraine, itself disrupted by the Russian invasion (a real example of how global events ripple into local food crises).
• More than 80% of the population live below the poverty line.
• Over 50% of people working in agriculture have lost their jobs.
• Food prices rose between 30 and 70%, meaning people can't afford a healthy diet.
• The UN estimates more than 226,000 Yemenis have died due to food shortages and lack of health services.
• Acute malnutrition now threatens over 50% of children under 5.
• The food-insecure population was expected to reach 19 million by the end of 2022.

Billions in aid have been sent through organisations such as UNICEF, Red Cross, World Food Programme, and Oxfam. But getting aid to those who need it is difficult for the same reasons listed under "causes" (blockades, corruption, damaged infrastructure). The WFP provides 13 million people with food assistance through rations, vouchers, and cash transfers. Until the conflict ends, food shortages are likely to continue — and may even worsen.

• I can classify a farm using arable/pastoral, commercial/subsistence, extensive/intensive, nomadic/sedentary.
• I can list and explain the physical factors affecting farming (temperature, growing season, precipitation, relief, soil, drainage).
• I can list and explain the human factors affecting farming (tradition, subsidies, transport, farm size, market demand, capital).
• I can draw and label a farming system diagram (inputs → processes → outputs).
• I can explain how farming systems impact ecosystems (monocultures, nutrient cycling, biomass).
• I can describe the Cumbria hill sheep farming case study in detail (land zones, inputs, outputs, challenges, adaptations).
• I can separate natural vs human causes of food shortages, and explain how they interact.
• I can distinguish undernutrition, malnutrition, and wasting.
• I can list the effects of food shortages beyond hunger (prices, unrest, migration, underdevelopment).
• I can evaluate each solution to food shortages with real advantages AND disadvantages.
• I can describe the Yemen case study with specific facts and figures (causes, effects, solutions).