Food generally comes from the land. Agriculture is the main use for land throughout the world and is one of the main industries of the world. Sometimes ariculture impacts badly on the environment, sometimes it is good. Many people farm the land, helping it to maintain the soil in a healthy and lively condition. 150-year old tea plantations in Sri Lanka help stop erosion on the steep hills.

Crop rotation, composting, organic methods and labour intensive systems can all help maintain sustainable forms of agriculture. However, intensive production aims to maximise outputs from selected areas. This drives away local cultural methods that know about the particular ways to deal with pests, seeds and cultivation. Skills are lost forever.

While the food may start from the land, it has usually come a long way before you put it in your mouth. At the turn of the century, more than 3/4 of the UK food was produced overseas, wheat from Canada, meat from Argentine and New Zealand, cocoa from Africa, coffee from brazil, tea from India and Sri Lanka and bananas from Caribbean.

CAP

After the Second World War, the UK government encouraged farming to produce more. Now the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Europe generates much more food than can be eaten. in the 1980s, there were mountains of food, especially milk and wheat. Now these surpluses are sold cheaply (or "dumped") on the rest of the world. Some land is "set aside", which means doing nothing with it.