Systems thinking is the ability to describe and/ or visualise a part of a complex reality, express that part of reality as a model, understand the model as a system, use the model to explain the behaviour of the system, anticipate the behaviour of the system, and evaluate its impacts on sustainable development, identify potential points of, and types of interventions, generate options to act, assess their impacts in the frame of sustainable development, and decide whether further actions are necessary or not.
What is the aim?
To enable learners to:
- recognize that by using a systems model, it may be possible to anticipate potential future scenarios of potato chips production and the impact of eating chips on the health of people, and
- use systems models to make projections about the potato chips production/potato chips consumption systems.
Activities, tasks, and suggested learning methods
Activity 1: Scenario Analysis for potato chips production
- Preparatory activity
Ask learners to answer the following question using the internet research method:
- What does a potato need to grow? (Such as soil, water, time, pH, sunlight)
- How many tons of potato are produced per hectare?
- Let’s make some calculations.
- The learners’ task is to identify the percentage of increase or decrease of the potato production in the last 30 years.To do so, they may go to the Potato PRO page
https://www.potatopro.com/world/potato-statisticsThis website lists potato producing countries. Choose one of the countries and click on the name.In case the Potato Pro webpage does not work, search for a reference that provides you the annual production of potatoes in the last 30 years. - Learners should calculate the increase or decrease in the production of potato from 1997 to 2007 to 2017.
- Next, calculate the weekly production of potatoes in a year. Take the production per year and divide by 52 weeks.
- Watch again the video How Kettle Chips are made, in Step 3, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6dRt0xOqDs). How has the production of potato chips changed over the years? How many potatoes were used in 1988 and 2018? Analyse if the number sounds correct to you.Note to the teacher: please note that the content of this video may have an error related to the quantity of production of chips, and this is integrated into the activity. See the Example later in this step for details.
- Based on the number of tons of potato produced per hectare, what is the land area in hectares used to produce this weekly quantity of potatoes? Make the calculations for 1997, 2007 and 2017.
- Let’s see a possible scenario: Calculate the quantity of potatoes we will produce if we increase the production by 50% from 2017 to 2027. How many hectares will be needed, if we want to increase the potato chips production by 50%?
- Time to reflect After they finish the calculations, let learners answer the following questions:
- What will be the quantum of potato production by 2047, if the rate of increase is the same as in the last 30 years?
- Based on the previous calculations. Imagine a future where the production will be 25% less than the average production of the last 30 years.
- Can you think of a production scenario that provides better conditions for the workers (salary, health care, workers’ rights, etc)?
- Analyse how many potatoes from the world market production are used for potato chip production.
- Imagine, what will happen if we feed the world with potato chips? When working on your scenario analysis, consider the increase of water used for irrigation and production, the amount of salt and oil, and anticipate consequences of this scenario not only for the consumers, but also of people who may be affected by the increase of all the resources needed.
- Impacts on people may differ, according to which part of the potato chip production they are related to: work in the chip factories, live next to the potato fields, farmers who grow potatoes in various parts of the world, and other components of the potato chip production system. You may want to take these additional consequences into account, when doing their scenario analysis or define further leading questions on how the scenarios will impact other elements (to be defined) of the system.
- Encourage the learners to develop further leading questions.
Resources
- Potato production in the world:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_potato_production#:~:text=The%20total%20world%20production%20for,for%2026.3%25%20of%20world%20production.
- Wikifarmer | Potato Harvest Yield & Storage https://wikifarmer.com/potato-harvest-yield-storage/
- Potato PROhttps://www.potatopro.com/world/potato-statistics
- FAO | Potato world – World potato production, 1991-2007http://www.fao.org/potato-2008/es/mundo/index.html
Example
| Activity 1 – Scenario Analysis for potato chips production
1. Preparatory activity information In the first year of potato farming, the yield may be about 25 tons per hectare In subsequent years, a farm may achieve yields from 40 to 70 tons per hectare.
2. Let’s make some calculations
a. The learners’ task is to identify the percentage of increase or decrease in potato production in the last 30 years. To do so, go to the Potato pro page at https://www.potatopro.com/world/potato-statistics. In there you will find the list of the 25 producing potato countries. Choose one of the countries and click on the name.
b. Calculate the increase or decrease in the production of potato from 1997 to 2007 to 2017
* In case the page does not work, search for a reference that provides you the annual production of potatoes in the last 30 years.
c. Now, let’s calculate what will be the weekly production of potatoes in a year. Take the production per year and divide by 52 weeks.
d. Watch again the potato video (“How Kettle Chips are made” in Step 3, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6dRt0xOqDs). How much has the production of potato chips changed over the years? How many potatoes were used in 1988 and 2018?
Note that there is a missing term in the video. The captions at 1 minute, 20 seconds explain that in 1988 they used 3 tons of potatoes per year, and at present they use 50,000 tons per year. The next caption is ‘6 million every week’, but it is not clear what the 6 million refers to. Is it the number of potatoes used every week? Or the number of packets of chips produced every week?
e. Based on the number of tons produced per hectare, how many hectares are used to produce this weekly quantity of potatoes. Make the calculations for 1997, 2007 and 2017.
f. Let’s see a possible scenario. Calculate the quantity of potatoes we will produce if we increase the production by 50% from 2017 to 2027. What area of farmland will be needed?
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Activity 2: Scenario Analysis for consumption of potato chips
- Ask learners to answer the following question using the internet research method:
- How many calories does a teenager with average exercise/ movement need in a day?
- What are the meals in a day? How best can we distribute the intake of calories during the day for a good diet?
- Ask the learners to take up the following tasks for the scenario discussions
- Check the nutrition information on the packets used in Step 1 and Step 2 to note the calories in one packet.
- What proportion of the calories needed in a day are consumed if you eat one packet of potato chips?
- Does it matter what kind of calories we consume? Justify your answer.
- Investigate what happens with your appetite when you eat fat and salt in combination.
- Considering that we do not only eat potato chips the whole day, what else do people eat over a day?
You may refer to sources such as ‘What the world eats’ project
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/what-the-world-eats/
https://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=7191 - Scenarios
- Imagine the worst-case scenario that the bad calories people consume will increase in the future. What are the probable consequences for their health?
- Imagine the best-case scenario that the bad calories people consume will decrease in the future. What are the consequences for their well-being?>
- Collect further leading questions listed by the learners.
Resources
- Video ‘What if you only ate chips?’ at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Omnk3C-1YA
- Webpage Potato Fun Facts for Consumersat http://nppga.org/consumers/funfacts.php#:~:text=The%20average%20American%20eats%20over,billion%20pounds%20of%20potato%20chips.
Example
| Activity 2 – Scenario Analysis for potato chips consumption
1. Preparatory activity information. Here is a possible solution taking in consideration these average. The learners should identify there are different possibilities according the definition of the context and amount of activity.
· Calories needed by a teenager with average exercise/movement per day.
· How best can we distribute the calories during the day for a good diet?
2. Learners’ tasks for the scenario discussion
a. Check the package used in Step 1 and Step 2 and review how many calories the package has. For example, 100g = 541 kcal Package of 105g = 568 kcal
b. What proportion of calories needed in a day can you get from a single packet of potato chips?
c. Does it matter what kind of calories we consume? Justify your answer.
Not all calories we eat are the same. The difference between calories that are good and bad for the body is important. Calories from proteins are good for the body when taken in moderation. Calories found in rapidly absorbed sugars, which for each gram provide four calories that if not consumed quickly will accumulate, that is, a person will gain weight.
d. Investigate what happens with your appetite when you eat fat and salt in combination?
Fat and salt are a common combination in many cooked as well as processed food. Overconsumption of fat and salt can lead to illnesses of the heart and blood circulation in the body.
e. Considering that we don’t eat only potato chips during the day, what else do people eat during the day? (You may like to introduce to your learners the webpage Hungry Planet: What the world eats project available at https://www.menzelphoto.com/index)
f. Scenarios
· Imagine the worst-case scenario that the number of calories people consume will increase in the future. What are the probable consequences for their health?
· Imagine the best-case scenario that the number of bad calories people consume will decrease in the future. What are the likely consequences for their well-being?
When conducting the scenario analysis, learners should consider aspects such as how the change of diet affects other parts of society, the health system, consequences for producers involved in the potato chip production, etc.
When we think of a future scenario, it is important not only to analyse the production increase, but also to anticipate further factors, which will influence the system, such as the need to convert farmland producing other crops to produce the potatoes and oil seeds for the frying, water for irrigation and production, and salt.
Encourage learners to take these additional consequences into account, when doing their scenario analysis and to list further questions on how the scenarios will impact other elements (to be defined) of the system.
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| Extension Activity
Nutrition Labels
Note to the teacher: This part of the activity is directly related to the question “Does it matter what kind of calories we consume?” in Activity 2.
Knowing the nutritional composition and understand the percentage of fast sugar, sodium, fibre and saturated fat provides the possibility to make a conscious decision about what we eat. To improve the understanding of the importance of the type of calories we consume you can address the following questions to the learners:
1. Does food packaging have labels in your city? Why should food have labels? Once they present their first impressions, ask learners to conduct internet research on types of labels, for example on nutrition, fortification with Iodine or other micronutrients (related to nutrition).
2. Are the labels clear and easy to understand? Why is this important?
3. Should there be labelling about the production of food as well (for example about the presence of agricultural produce from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food, or organic produce)?
Here are some examples of labels on food packaging around the world.
A) Nutri-score (Europe) See these webpages for a simple explanation about the Nutri-Score:
B) Black Labels (Mexico)
From left to right: Excess calories, excess sodium, excess trans-fat, excess sugar, excess saturated fat.
See these webpages for a simple explanation about the Black Labels: https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/new-warning-labels-now-required-on-packaged-foods/
Fairtrade Genetically modified organisms
Preparing for GMO labelling in 2022 https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/17559-preparing-for-gmo-labeling-in-2022 National Programme for Organic Production (India)
http://apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/organic/Organic_Products.htm |
Further leading questions
- What is the use of looking into the future (with a systems model)?
- Having anticipated future situations with the help of systems analysis, can you also understand whether these will be positive or negative situations? Is that the future you want?
- Can human beings change the behaviour of systems?
