Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460): Theme 3.2 – Food production – Study Guide

This guide covers section 3.2 Food production of the Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460) syllabus for examination in 2025 and 2026, Version 2 (published November 2022). Section 3.2 sits in Theme 3: Economic development. It is assessed mainly in Paper 1 Geographical Themes, where the syllabus says questions combine resource-based tasks with “free-response writing requiring place-specific information”. Paper 2 Geographical Skills can also set knowledge questions based on topics from the three themes, so you need to read farming data as well as write about it.

Use this guide with the revision notes and the practice questions. Track your progress on the Cambridge IGCSE Geography hub and the 0460 checklist.

Coverage table

Syllabus reference	What you must know or be able to do (from the syllabus)	Where assessed
3.2 point 1	Describe and explain the main features of an agricultural system: inputs, processes and outputs	Paper 1; data skills in Paper 2
3.2 guidance	Farming types: commercial and subsistence; arable, pastoral and mixed; intensive and extensive	Paper 1
3.2 guidance	The influence of natural inputs (relief, climate and soil) and human inputs (economic and social) on agricultural land use, and their combined influence on the scale of production, methods of organisation and products	Paper 1; Paper 2
3.2 point 2	Recognise the causes and effects of food shortages and describe possible solutions	Paper 1
3.2 guidance	Natural causes (including drought, floods, tropical storms, pests); economic and political causes (including low capital investment, poor distribution/transport difficulties, wars)	Paper 1
3.2 guidance	The negative effects of food shortages; how shortages encourage food aid and measures to increase output	Paper 1
Case studies	A farm or agricultural system; a country or region suffering from food shortages	Paper 1

The syllabus uses the word “including” for the lists of inputs and causes. That means you must study everything listed, and you may add other relevant points.

Agriculture as a system

Geographers treat a farm like a factory. Things go in, work is done, and products come out.

• Inputs are everything the farm needs. Natural inputs are relief, climate and soil. Human inputs are economic (money, machinery, seeds, fertiliser, labour, markets) and social (land ownership, tradition, inheritance, education).
• Processes are the activities that turn inputs into outputs: ploughing, sowing, weeding, irrigating, spraying, milking, harvesting, storing.
• Outputs are the products (crops, milk, meat, wool, eggs) and the by-products and waste (manure, straw, run-off).
• Feedback is when outputs return as inputs. Profit is spent on new machinery. Manure is spread on the fields. Seed is saved for next year.

An exam diagram usually has three boxes joined by arrows. Put the correct items in the correct box. “Labour” is an input. “Harvesting” is a process. “Grain” is an output.

Classifying farming types

The syllabus names three pairs or groups of types. Every farm can be described using all three.

Basis	Type	Meaning
Purpose	Commercial	Produce is grown to sell for profit
	Subsistence	Produce feeds the farmer’s household, with little left to sell
Product	Arable	Growing crops
	Pastoral	Rearing animals
	Mixed	Both crops and animals on the same farm
Use of inputs	Intensive	High inputs of labour or capital per hectare; high output per hectare; usually small farms
	Extensive	Low inputs per hectare; low output per hectare; usually large farms

So a Bangladeshi rice plot is subsistence, arable and intensive (lots of labour per hectare). A Canadian Prairie wheat farm is commercial, arable and extensive (few workers and large fields, even though it uses expensive machines). Intensity is measured per hectare. A farm that uses a lot of machinery spread over thousands of hectares is still extensive.

How natural and human inputs shape land use

Relief. Flat land suits machinery, irrigation and arable farming. Steep slopes have thin soils and are hard to plough, so they are used for grazing or forestry, or are terraced. High land is colder because temperature falls with height.

Climate. Crops need a minimum temperature and length of growing season. Rainfall amount and reliability decide whether crops can be grown without irrigation. Areas with low, unreliable rainfall often have extensive pastoral farming. Warm, wet areas can grow crops all year.

Soil. Deep, fertile, well-drained soils such as river alluvium suit intensive arable farming. Thin, acidic or waterlogged soils are used for grazing.

Economic inputs. Capital buys machinery, fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation. Markets decide what sells: perishable products such as milk and vegetables are grown near cities. Transport links let farmers reach those markets. Government policy, such as subsidies or price controls, can change what is profitable.

Social inputs. Land tenure matters: a farmer who rents land on short leases has little reason to invest. Where land is divided between sons at inheritance, plots become small and scattered. Tradition, education and family labour also shape choices.

Combined influences. These inputs work together to set the scale of production (farm size and output), the methods of organisation (family labour or hired workers, co-operatives, contracts) and the products. You gain more credit for showing the link between two factors than for listing six separate ones. For example, flat land plus high capital allows large, mechanised, commercial arable farming.

You can link this to the climate graphs in climate and natural vegetation and to river flooding in rivers.

Case study 1: wet rice farming in Bangladesh

Type. Mostly subsistence (with some sale), arable, intensive. Rice is grown on more than 13 million farms and occupies about 76% of the total cropped area.

Natural inputs. The land is the very flat Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. Floods spread fertile alluvium over the fields. The monsoon brings heavy summer rain, and the climate is warm enough for crops all year.

Human inputs. A large rural labour force. Agriculture employs a large share of Bangladesh’s workforce, roughly two-fifths. Inputs also include seeds, fertiliser, draught animals or small tillers, and irrigation from tubewells.

Processes. Seedbeds, transplanting seedlings by hand into flooded paddies, weeding, harvesting and threshing.

Seasons and outputs. Rice is grown in three seasons:

• Aus: sown in March or April and harvested in summer; a rainy-season crop.
• Aman: planted in July or August, harvested in November or December, and relies on rainfall.
• Boro: planted from mid-November to February and harvested from April to June. It is a dry-season crop that needs irrigation. With high-yielding varieties (HYV), fertiliser and irrigation, boro is now the leading paddy crop.

Output reached about 39.1 million tonnes in 2022-23. Average yields are close to 5 tonnes of paddy (unmilled rice) per hectare, and Bangladesh is largely self-sufficient in rice.

Evaluation. This case shows clearly how natural inputs (flat land, alluvium, monsoon) and human inputs (labour, irrigation, HYV seed) combine. Its limitation is that farms vary: some households sell much of their crop. Boro also depends on costly inputs, so poorer farmers gain less. The same flat delta that makes rice farming possible also exposes it to flooding and cyclones.

Contrast. On the Canadian Prairies, in provinces such as Saskatchewan, farms are large and mechanised. They grow wheat, oats, barley and canola on flat land. Early homesteads were a quarter section (160 acres), and farms have since become much larger. South-western Saskatchewan is prone to cyclical drought, so water management is a challenge. The contrast shows that capital, not just labour, can drive production.

Worked example paragraph. Explain how natural inputs influence wet rice farming in a named area. In the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh, the land is very flat, so water can be held in level paddy fields for transplanted rice (knowledge and application). Annual floods deposit alluvium, which renews soil fertility without much fertiliser, so poorer farmers can still get high yields (analysis). The monsoon gives enough rain for the aman crop to rely on rainfall alone. However, the dry-season boro crop needs tubewell irrigation, which shows that natural inputs alone no longer explain output (evaluation).

Causes of food shortages

A food shortage happens when people cannot get enough food, either because too little is produced or because they cannot obtain or afford it. Famine is an extreme, widespread shortage that causes deaths from hunger.

Natural causes (the syllabus lists all four).

• Drought: crops fail and animals die. Pastoralists lose their main asset.
• Floods: crops drown, soil is washed away and stores are spoiled.
• Tropical storms: strong winds and storm surges destroy crops on coasts and flood fields with salt water.
• Pests: insects, such as the desert locust swarms that spread across East Africa in 2019-2021, eat crops. Diseases attack plants and livestock.

Economic and political causes (also listed).

• Low capital investment: farmers cannot afford irrigation, fertiliser, better seed or storage, so yields stay low and harvests are lost.
• Poor distribution and transport difficulties: food may exist in one region but cannot reach another. Poor roads raise prices and slow emergency aid.
• Wars: fighting destroys crops and stores, drives farmers off their land and blocks aid.

Other relevant factors include rapid population growth (see population and settlement), high food prices and poverty.

Effects of food shortages and responses

Negative effects. Undernutrition and malnutrition weaken people, especially children. Weak bodies catch diseases more easily. People sell animals and tools to buy food, which makes the next harvest smaller. Families migrate to camps or towns. Children leave school. In famine, death rates rise sharply.

Food aid. Food shortages often lead to food aid: food or money given by governments, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) or charities. Emergency aid saves lives. Long-term free food can lower local prices and discourage local farmers. Aid may also be stolen or blocked, and it is costly to transport.

Measures to increase output. These include:

• Irrigation, such as tubewells and small dams.
• High-yielding varieties and fertiliser. India’s Green Revolution from the 1960s, linked to Norman Borlaug’s high-yielding wheat, raised wheat and rice output in states such as Punjab. Critics point to heavy groundwater use and costs that richer farmers could meet more easily.
• Appropriate technology, such as hand pumps and simple storage silos.
• Pest control and early warning systems.
• Land reform, credit and farmer education.

Case study 2: Somalia, 2010-2012 food crisis

Causes. In 2011 the Horn of Africa suffered a drought widely described as the worst in 60 years. In many areas, rainfall from April to June 2011 was less than 30% of the 1995-2010 average. Livestock losses reached 40-60% in some areas. Staple food prices in southern Somalia rose by up to 240%. Conflict involving the militant group al-Shabaab made matters worse. Some Western governments restricted aid to areas the group controlled, and aid workers were intimidated, kidnapped or killed, so some operations were suspended.

Effects. On 20 July 2011 the UN declared famine in the Lower Shabelle and Bakool regions of southern Somalia. Famine was later extended to parts of Middle Shabelle, to camps for internally displaced people around Mogadishu and Afgooye, and to the Bay region. More than 920,000 Somali refugees had fled by mid-September 2011. Dadaab camp in Kenya held at least 440,000 people against a capacity of 90,000. Estimates of the death toll range from about 50,000 to about 260,000.

Responses. The WFP began an airlift to Mogadishu on 27 July 2011. USAID gave cash assistance through hawala money transfer and mobile phones, so people could buy local food. By September 2011 the UN appeal for 2.5 billion US dollars was 63% funded. In February 2012 the UN said the famine was over.

Evaluation. This is a strong case because it shows natural and political causes together. Drought alone did not cause famine; conflict and blocked aid turned a shortage into mass death. One limitation is that death toll estimates vary widely, so avoid quoting one figure as certain.

Worked example paragraph. To what extent was drought the main cause of food shortage in a named country? In southern Somalia in 2011, rainfall from April to June was less than 30% of the 1995-2010 average in many areas and some areas lost 40-60% of their livestock, so drought cut food supply (knowledge and application). Food prices then rose by up to 240%, so poor households could not buy what was available (analysis). However, neighbouring areas with the same drought did not see famine declared, while conflict with al-Shabaab blocked aid in the south. So drought triggered the shortage, but war turned it into famine (evaluation).

Common errors

• Calling a farm “intensive” because it uses machines. Intensity is about inputs and output per hectare.
• Listing inputs without saying how they affect land use, scale, organisation or products.
• Mixing up arable (crops) and pastoral (animals).
• Writing “lack of rain” for every cause. The syllabus also lists floods, tropical storms, pests, low capital investment, transport and wars.
• Describing a famine with no place, dates or figures. Paper 1 expects place-specific information.
• Treating food aid as wholly good or wholly bad. Separate short-term emergency aid from long-term dependence.
• Using a case study of a country with shortages when the question asks about a farm, or the reverse.

Where to go next

• Revise this unit fast with the revision notes, then test yourself with the practice questions.
• Climate inputs: climate and natural vegetation and weather.
• Population pressure and food: population and settlement revision notes.
• Other Theme 3 units: development (employment structure and indicators) and industry (the same inputs-processes-outputs approach).
• See the full course on the Cambridge IGCSE Geography hub and tick off topics on the checklist.

Official syllabus

This guide follows the Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460) syllabus for examination in 2025 and 2026, Version 2 (published November 2022), section 3.2 Food production. Your teacher will confirm which case studies your class uses.