Will climate change lead to more or less food production worldwide? Students will learn about the factors that limit plant growth as well as how one small country, Bangladesh, is working to preserve its food production in the midst of changing climatic conditions.

This activity emphasizes graphic reading skills and finding trends in different data sets. The lesson utilizes an interactive World Food Map that provides students an opportunity to manipulate and make sense of data about feeding 9 billion people worldwide.

What is famine and why do famines happen? Using class discussion, a radio story, and an interactive timeline, students will investigate the complex causes of famines, both in modern times and throughout history.

Modern civilization has tremendous food production capability and yet millions of people go hungry worldwide. In this activity, students examine some of the factors contributing to hunger worldwide, investigate the link between poverty and hunger, and discuss the role of government in reducing hunger. This lesson utilizes an interactive World Food Map that provides students an opportunity to manipulate and make sense of data about food and hunger worldwide.

Why is food important to our bodies? In this data-rich lesson, students will learn about macronutrients and why our bodies need them. Students begin by recording their personal daily food intake and analyzing their own macronutrient consumption according to US standards. Students then compare macronutrient consumption profiles of teenagers from different countries. The two parts can be done in sequence or independently.

What do the faces of malnutrition look like? Let your students be the doctors and researchers as they identify the causes of the ailments that young people experience. The resources and case studies can be accessed online.

Micronutrients are essential to human bodies, but are only needed in small amounts. Guide your students to a deeper understanding of these necessary nutrients by using the two activities in this lesson. In the first activity, a jigsaw exercise, students will learn about micronutrients: how our bodies obtain them, how much we need, and the effects of too many or too few micronutrients. Students will conduct individual research and then reconvene to teach their peers. Students will then track their food intake, compute their micronutrient intake, and compare their intake to US Recommended Daily Intakes.

Our food directly affects our bodies. This lesson encourages your students to think critically about what happens to the food they eat. You Are What You Eat includes a compilation of fact sheets outlining how macronutrients and micronutrients are ingested, digested, and assimilated by the human body and the consequences of nutritional deficiencies. Use the sheets with one of three types of activities that target different time frames and depth of content. These activities make an excellent introduction or wrap-up to a unit on digestion or biochemistry. This activity complements the Macronutrient Analysis and Mighty Micronutrients lessons in this unit, which include dietary self-study and comparisons between diets of teens from the United States and Haiti.

Using a television story and an interactive map, students will investigate the complexities associated with finding arable land and producing food.

If a country has abundant arable land, does that mean it has high agricultural yield? What factors contribute to the productivity of the arable land? With world population exceeding 7 billion and increasing fast, food production is an essential issue. In this data-rich lesson, students will investigate how arable land, agricultural land, productivity and yield are distinct, inter-related concepts.

Can small-scale farmers feed the world? Students will learn about an organization called One Acre Fund that brings struggling farmers together to establish a market community and offers them a unique investment package.

To grow food crops we need healthy soil. What is soil and how do farmers make sure it remains productive? Using online resources and two stories from the Food for 9 Billion series, students will investigate how farmers in two different countries are addressing the need to nourish the soil.

How are the issues of population growth, food, the environment and social policy connected? Using an interactive timeline, a television story and public data sets, students will explore how human population has changed over time and what the impacts of those changes are.

Examine the African influences on food in the Southern United States. To assess the culture of food and its preparation, students focus on slave diet and work with the article African Crops and Slave Cuisine.

The origin of every food can ultimately be traced back to plants. This short introductory activity helps students move from foods that they eat to the plants that created them.

Explore differences between genotype and phenotype, using rice as a model. See and taste genetic diversity while investigating nine different types of rice.

Design an experiment to explore what plants - rice plants - need to grow. Define and control variables like light, water and soil.

What exactly are you eating when you eat a bowl of rice? Investigate the anatomy of a rice plant. Learn about the differences between brown and white rice.

Examine the African influences on food in the Southern United States. To assess the culture of food and its preparation, students focus on slave diet and work with the article African Crops and Slave Cuisine.

Groups of students in Legone, Ghana and in Harlem, NY have become "video" pen pals. Through digital videos, students have been asking and answering questions about their lives, their culture, their food, and their families.

Learn about four West African environments: mangroves, grasslands, river floodplains and tidal floodplains. Shape the environment—as West African people have—for growing rice. Success of students' earth-shaping techniques will be tested by their success in growing rice.

Explore the culture and daily life of West African people using a variety of source materials, including a web quest. Create a museum exhibit featuring “artifacts,” such as jewelry, baskets or pottery, weapons, clothing, or replicas of the houses, which depict daily life in West African cultures.

Use modern genetic techniques to determine if an archaeological sample is Carolina Gold Rice. Then use the same tools to search the world for the source of Carolina Gold rice.

Carolina Gold Rice was the first export crop from Colonial America in the late 1700s. The rice-growing and culinary knowledge of African enslaved peoples forced to migrate to the American Colonies were essential to its success.