Future of Food is the OCR A-Level Geography (H481) unit on food security — what it means, why it varies between and within countries, what threatens it, and what can be done about it. It is one of five Geographical Debates on Paper 3; students study two, and each one is examined in all three sections of that paper. The specification requires case studies of a place where human and physical factors combine to cause food insecurity, a dryland area, an indigenous farming technique in an extreme environment, a physical environment changed by food production, two places at contrasting levels of development for the impacts of poor food security, and two more for the strategies used to improve it.
The whole of Future of Food for OCR A-Level Geography (H481), built around the five enquiry questions.
What is food security and why is it of global significance?
What are the causes of inequality in global food security?
What are the threats to global food security?
How do food production and security issues impact people and the physical environment?
Is there hope for the future of food?
Every specification bullet point is covered, clearly identified, and in one download. No more searching across your paper files, teacher PowerPoints, OneNote and Google Classroom assignments, or generic free notes you have found online.
Every process in the specification is covered in the way the exam asks for it: what causes it, who it affects, and why the consequences differ from one place to the next. That is what the extended questions in Sections B and C need.
Examiner's Warnings — concise summaries of the common mistakes identified in the OCR Examiner's Reports, so that you do not make the same ones and do not need to go and read them yourself.
Past exam paper questions, and where to find them — every question OCR has already set on each topic, so that you know how this material is tested in the exam.
Potential Future Questions — written with the same command words and the same wording structure as the OCR questions, so that you can see what is likely to come up and prepare for it.
Revision Recall — retrieval practice questions, so that you revise actively rather than re-reading.
Future of Food asks for eight places across six separate case-study requirements, which is why scattered notes fall apart on this unit.
All of them are covered here, each one labelled: India's Punjab for human and physical factors combining; the Sahel as a dryland area; indigenous food production in the Arctic; the Aral Sea for a physical environment changed by food production; the USA and Kenya for the impacts of poor food security at contrasting levels of development, with Tonga as an additional small-island alternative; and Cuba and the UK for the strategies used to improve it.
Email jono@geographystudio.co.uk and say which one. I will reply, and it tells me which case study to write next.
Most students learn case studies as a set of facts, then find that the exam does not ask for facts. It asks for an argument. Every case study closes with a Big Picture: the story that case study tells, and the different arguments it can be used to build.
Paper 3 is the Geographical Debates paper. There are five topics; you study two, and you answer on both.
Your two topics each come up three times. Section A is based on the Resource Booklet. Section B is synoptic, so it asks you to bring in the rest of the course. Section C is an extended essay. One unit, examined three ways — which is why knowing a debate properly is worth more here than anywhere else on the course.
If you have not tested these notes yet, the complete Earth's Life Support Systems unit is free.