Future health and food security and sustainability practice questions.

Research on food-system emissions shows that transport contributes only a small share of the total footprint of most foods. Which change would therefore cut a household's food emissions most?

• Buying the same foods from farms within the region
• Switching to recyclable packaging for all groceries
• Shopping weekly by car instead of daily on foot
• Replacing most beef and lamb with plant proteins

Answer: Replacing most beef and lamb with plant proteins

Ruminant livestock release methane and need large areas of land and feed, so what is eaten matters far more than how far it travelled. Food miles is the most persistent misconception in this topic.

In Thailand deaths from infectious disease have fallen sharply, life expectancy at birth now exceeds 75 years, and cardiovascular disease and cancers cause most deaths. Which stage of the epidemiological transition does this describe?

• The age of degenerative and human-made diseases
• The age of pestilence and famine
• The age of receding pandemics
• The age of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases

Answer: The age of degenerative and human-made diseases

The third stage is reached when chronic, degenerative causes replace infectious ones as the main killers. The receding-pandemics stage is the earlier phase in which infectious mortality is still falling steeply.

Singapore's 30 by 30 target, set in 2019, aims to produce 30 % of the country's nutritional needs locally by 2030, largely through multi-storey indoor farms. Which constraint does this technology mainly overcome?

• A short growing season caused by low temperatures
• Soils degraded by decades of intensive cultivation
• An extreme shortage of agricultural land
• A lack of rainfall for irrigating field crops

Answer: An extreme shortage of agricultural land

Stacking crops raises output per unit of ground area, so the advantage is greatest where land rather than warmth or water is the binding constraint. The trade-off is high energy use, because lighting has to replace sunlight.

Sustainable intensification is proposed as a way to feed a growing population. What does the term mean?

• Raising yields on existing farmland while reducing environmental harm
• Expanding the cultivated area into forest and grassland
• Reducing yields deliberately to allow ecosystems to recover
• Replacing all agriculture with imported food

Answer: Raising yields on existing farmland while reducing environmental harm

The point of the phrase is that the two halves must hold together: more output per hectare so that land is spared, achieved through better nutrient and water management rather than through more inputs. Critics note that yield gains have historically led to expansion rather than sparing.

Roughly a third of food produced globally is lost or wasted. Where does the loss mostly occur in low-income countries, compared with high-income ones?

• Mainly after harvest in low-income countries, mainly at retail and household level in high-income ones
• Mainly at household level everywhere, regardless of income
• Mainly during transport in high-income countries and in the field in low-income ones
• Loss rates are identical at every stage in all countries

Answer: Mainly after harvest in low-income countries, mainly at retail and household level in high-income ones

Where storage, refrigeration and roads are weak, food spoils between field and market; where they are strong, food reaches consumers and is discarded. The distinction matters because it means the two need entirely different remedies - infrastructure in one case, behaviour and retail practice in the other.

Antimicrobial resistance is described as a threat to future health security. Which agricultural practice contributes most directly to it?

• Routine use of antibiotics in intensive livestock production
• Application of nitrogen fertiliser to cereal crops
• Irrigation of vegetables with treated wastewater
• Rotation of legumes with cereals to restore soil nitrogen

Answer: Routine use of antibiotics in intensive livestock production

Using antibiotics continuously at low doses for growth promotion or disease prevention exposes bacterial populations to constant selection pressure, and resistant strains can transfer to humans through food, water and direct contact. It is a health problem generated by a farming practice, which is why the response requires agricultural regulation.