BI-1895
Energy flow in ecosystems
Biology · Secondary 4 · Hard · Energy flow in ecosystems
A farmer can use the same field either to grow maize for people to eat, or to grow maize to feed cattle and then sell the beef. Why can the field usually feed more people if maize is eaten directly by humans?
- Cattle convert all the energy in maize into meat with no losses.
- Energy is lost between trophic levels, so eating plants directly keeps more energy available to humans.
- Maize plants do not carry out respiration, so they store no energy.
- Beef contains no energy from maize, so it does not depend on the field size.
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