Student Worksheet

Thought-starter: Where do your bananas come from?

Complete these activities on the worksheets, writing your answers in the spaces provided.

You – the banana farmer.

Imagine you are the owner of a banana plantation in Far North Queensland.

1 Here are four natural disasters that could affect your harvest of bananas this year. Unscramble the letters and write them on the lines provided.

2 If you lost three quarters of your crop of bananas this year, what do you think would happen to your income? Write your answer below. Use proper sentence structure for all your answers.

3 Imagine all the banana plantation farmers in Innisfail lose most of their harvest this year. What do you think will happen to the price of bananas in stores?

4 Why might this happen to prices?

This scenario actually happened to banana farmers in and around Innisfail in 2006. Cyclone Larry wiped out between 80 and 90% of the banana crop that year. Larry was the most destructive cyclone to hit Queensland in a century. Banana prices increased by around 500%.

5 If one kilogram of bananas cost $2.00 in 2005 and they increased in price by 500% in 2006, how much would a kilogram of bananas cost after the increase?

Hint: What is 100% of $2.00? Multiply that number by 5 to get the answer.

Then add the total to the original $2.00 price.

Write your answer here:

Imagine the devastation to crops and food supplies that could be caused if changes to our climate are not reduced. Apart from bananas, other types of food grown in Australia could be affected by extreme weather events.

6 What other food crops are grown in Australia that might be wiped out by natural disasters caused by climate change? List four here:

7 Unscramble these food types grown by Aussie farmers, using the hints to help you.

Worksheet 2 Homework

Use the library, an atlas or an internet search engine to locate ONE region of Australia where each of these food crops is grown. There are multiple places around Australia involved in supplying these products. For an extra challenge, try to find TWO locations from different states or territories. Write your answers in your book using a table format like the example shown here.

Earth Hour - Banana Dramas

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