Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of
Definitions
According to the United Nations World Food Programme, famine is declared when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food.[3] The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification criteria define Phase 5 famine of acute food insecurity as occurring when:[4][5]
- At least 20% of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope; and
- The prevalence of acute malnutrition in children exceeds 30%; and
- The death rate exceeds two people per 10,000 people per day.
The declaration of a famine carries no binding obligations on the UN or member states, but serves to focus global attention on the problem.[6]
History
The cyclical occurrence of famine has been a mainstay of societies engaged in subsistence agriculture since the dawn of agriculture itself. The frequency and intensity of famine has fluctuated throughout history, depending on changes in food demand, such as population growth, and supply-side shifts caused by changing climatic conditions. Famine was first eliminated in the Netherlands and England during the 17th century, due to the commercialization of agriculture and the implementation of improved techniques to increase crop yields.[citation needed]
Decline of famine
In the 16th and 17th century, the feudal system began to break down, and more prosperous farmers began to enclose their own land and improve their yields to sell the surplus crops for a profit. These capitalist landowners paid their labourers with money, thereby increasing the commercialization of rural society. In the emerging competitive labour market, better techniques for the improvement of labour productivity were increasingly valued and rewarded. It was in the farmer's interest to produce as much as possible on their land in order to sell it to areas that demanded that product. They produced guaranteed surpluses of their crop every year if they could.
Subsistence peasants were also increasingly forced to commercialize their activities because of increasing
By the 1590s, these trends were sufficiently developed in the rich and commercialized province of Holland to allow its population to withstand a general outbreak of famine in Western Europe at that time. By that time, the Netherlands had one of the most commercialized agricultural systems in Europe. They grew many industrial crops such as flax, hemp and hops. Agriculture became increasingly specialized and efficient. The efficiency of Dutch agriculture allowed for much more rapid urbanization in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries than anywhere else in Europe. As a result, productivity and wealth increased, allowing the Netherlands to maintain a steady food supply.[7]
By 1650, English agriculture had also become commercialized on a much wider scale. The last peacetime famine in England was in 1623–24. There were still periods of hunger, as in the Netherlands, but no more famines ever occurred. Common areas for pasture were enclosed for private use and large scale, efficient farms were consolidated. Other technical developments included the draining of marshes, more efficient field use patterns, and the wider introduction of industrial crops. These agricultural developments led to wider prosperity in England and increasing urbanization.[8] By the end of the 17th century, English agriculture was the most productive in Europe.[9] In both England and the Netherlands, the population stabilized between 1650 and 1750, the same time period in which the sweeping changes to agriculture occurred. Famine still occurred in other parts of Europe, however. In Eastern Europe, famines occurred as late as the twentieth century.
Attempts at famine alleviation
Because of the severity of famine, it was a chief concern for governments and other authorities. In pre-industrial Europe, preventing famine, and ensuring timely food supplies, was one of the chief concerns of many governments, although they were severely limited in their options due to limited levels of external trade, infrastructure, and bureaucracy generally too rudimentary to effect real relief. Most governments were concerned by famine because it could lead to
By the mid-19th century and the onset of the Industrial Revolution, it became possible for governments to alleviate the effects of famine through price controls, large scale importation of food products from foreign markets, stockpiling, rationing, regulation of production and charity. The Great Famine of 1845 in Ireland was one of the first famines to feature such intervention, although the government response was often lackluster. The initial response of the British government to the early phase of the famine was "prompt and relatively successful", according to F. S. L. Lyons.[10] Confronted by widespread crop failure in the autumn of 1845, Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel purchased £100,000 worth of maize and cornmeal secretly from America. Baring Brothers & Co initially acted as purchasing agents for the Prime Minister. The government hoped that they would not "stifle private enterprise" and that their actions would not act as a disincentive to local relief efforts. Due to weather conditions, the first shipment did not arrive in Ireland until the beginning of February 1846.[11] The maize corn was then re-sold for a penny a pound.[12]
In 1846, Peel moved to repeal the Corn Laws, tariffs on grain which kept the price of bread artificially high. The famine situation worsened during 1846 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in that year did little to help the starving Irish; the measure split the Conservative Party, leading to the fall of Peel's ministry.[13] In March, Peel set up a programme of public works in Ireland.[14]
Despite this promising start, the measures undertaken by Peel's successor,
A systematic attempt at creating the necessary regulatory framework for dealing with famine was developed by the British Raj in the 1880s. In order to comprehensively address the issue of famine, the British created an Indian Famine commission to recommend steps that the government would be required to take in the event of a famine.[16][17][18] The Famine Commission issued a series of government guidelines and regulations on how to respond to famines and food shortages called the Famine Code. The famine code was also one of the first attempts to scientifically predict famine in order to mitigate its effects. These were finally passed into law in 1883 under Lord Ripon.
The
20th century
During the 20th century, an estimated 70 to 120 million people died from famines across the world, of whom over half died in China, with an estimated 30 million dying during the famine of 1958–1961,[20] up to 10 million in the Chinese famine of 1928–1930, and over two million in the Chinese famine of 1942–1943, and millions more lost in famines in North and East China. The USSR lost 8 million claimed by the Soviet famine of 1930–1933, over a million in both the Soviet famine of 1946–1947 and Siege of Leningrad, the 5 million in the Russian famine of 1921–1922, and others famines. Java suffered 2.5 million deaths under Japanese occupation during World War Two.[21] The other most notable famine of the century was the Bengal famine of 1943, resulting both from the Japanese occupation of Burma, resulting in an influx of refugees, and blocking Burmese grain imports and a failure of the Bengali provincial Government to declare a famine, and fund relief, the imposition of grain and transport embargoes by the neighbouring provincial administrations, to prevent their own stocks being transferred to Bengal, the failure to implement India wide rationing by the central Delhi authority, hoarding and profiteering by merchants, medieval land management practices, an Axis powers denial program that confiscated boats once used to transport grain, a Delhi administration that prioritised supplying, and offering medical treatment to the British Indian Army, War workers, and Civil servants, over the populace at large, incompetence and ignorance, and an Imperial War Cabinet initially leaving the issue to the Colonial administration to resolve, than to the original local crop failures, and blights.[22]
A few of the great famines of the late 20th century were: the Biafran famine in the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge-caused famine in Cambodia in the 1970s, the North Korean famine of the 1990s, and the Ethiopian famine of 1983–1985. Approximately 3 million died as a consequence of the Second Congo War.
The latter event was reported on television reports around the world, carrying footage of starving Ethiopians whose plight was centered around a feeding station near the town of Korem. This stimulated the first mass movements to end famine across the world.
BBC newsreader Michael Buerk gave moving commentary of the tragedy on 23 October 1984, which he described as a "biblical famine". This prompted the Band Aid single, which was organized by Bob Geldof and featured more than 20 pop stars. The Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia raised even more funds for the cause. Hundreds of thousands of people died within one year as a result of the famine, but the publicity Live Aid generated encouraged Western nations to make available enough surplus grain to end the immediate hunger crisis in Africa.[23]
Some of the famines of the 20th century served the geopolitical purposes of governments, including traumatizing and replacing distrusted ethnic populations in strategically important regions, rendering regions vulnerable to invasion difficult to govern by an enemy power and shifting the burden of food shortage onto regions where the distress of the population posed a lesser risk of catastrophic regime de-legitimation.[24]
21st century
Until 2017, worldwide deaths from famine had been falling dramatically. The
On 20 April 2021, hundreds of aid organisations from around the world wrote an open letter to The Guardian newspaper, warning that millions of people in Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Honduras, Venezuela, Nigeria, Haiti, Central African Republic, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Sudan faced starvation. Organisations including the International Council of Voluntary Agencies and the World Food Programme said: "Girls and boys, men and women, are being starved by conflict and violence; by inequality; by the impacts of climate change; by the loss of land, jobs of prospects; by a fight against Covid-19 that has left them even further behind." The groups warned that funding had dwindled, while money alone would not be enough by itself. Governments should step in to end conflicts and ensure humanitarian access, they said. "If no action is taken, lives will be lost. The responsibility to address this lies with states", they added.[27]
In November 2021, the World Food Programme reported that 45 million people were "teetering on the very edge of famine" in 43 countries, and that the slightest shock would push them over the precipice. This number had risen from 42 million earlier in 2021, and from 27 million in 2019.[28] The slightest shock — be it extreme weather linked to climate change, conflict, or the deadly interplay of both hunger drivers — could push tens of millions of people into irreversible peril, a prospect the agency had been warning of for more than a year. Afghanistan was becoming the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with the country's needs surpassing those of the other worst-hit countries — Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria and even Yemen.[29]
In 2023 and 2024, the Israeli response to the
Regional history
Africa
Early history
In the mid-22nd century BC, a sudden and short-lived climatic change that caused reduced rainfall resulted in several decades of drought in
According to John Iliffe, "Portuguese records of Angola from the 16th century show that a great famine occurred on average every seventy years; accompanied by epidemic disease, it might kill one-third or one-half of the population, destroying the demographic growth of a generation and forcing colonists back into the river valleys."[38]
The first documentation of weather in West-Central Africa occurs around the mid-16th to 17th centuries in areas such as Luanda Kongo, however, not much data was recorded on the issues of weather and disease except for a few notable documents. The only records obtained are of violence between Portuguese and Africans during the Battle of Mbilwa in 1665. In these documents the Portuguese wrote of African raids on Portuguese merchants solely for food, giving clear signs of famine. Additionally, instances of cannibalism by the African Jaga were also more prevalent during this time frame, indicating an extreme deprivation of a primary food source.[39]
Colonial period
A notable period of famine occurred around the turn of the 20th century in the Congo Free State. In forming this state, Leopold used mass labor camps to finance his empire.[40] This period resulted in the death of up to 10 million Congolese from brutality, disease and famine.[41] Some colonial "pacification" efforts often caused severe famine, notably with the repression of the Maji Maji revolt in Tanganyika in 1906. The introduction of cash crops such as cotton, and forcible measures to impel farmers to grow these crops, sometimes impoverished the peasantry in many areas, such as northern Nigeria, contributing to greater vulnerability to famine when severe drought struck in 1913.[42]
A large-scale famine occurred in Ethiopia in 1888 and succeeding years, as the
The oral traditions of the Himba people recall two droughts from 1910 to 1917. From 1910 to 1911 the Himba described the drought as "drought of the omutati seed", also called omangowi, the fruit of an unidentified vine that people ate during the time period. From 1914 to 1916, droughts brought katur' ombanda or kari' ombanda 'the time of eating clothing'.[44]
20th century
For the middle part of the 20th century, agriculturalists, economists and geographers did not consider Africa to be especially famine prone. From 1870 to 2010, 87% of deaths from famine occurred in Asia and Eastern Europe, with only 9.2% in Africa.[26] There were notable counter-examples, such as the famine in Rwanda during World War II and the Malawi famine of 1949, but most famines were localized and brief food shortages. Although the drought was brief the main cause of death in Rwanda was due to Belgian prerogatives to acquisition grain from their colony (Rwanda). The increased grain acquisition was related to WW2. This and the drought caused 300,000 Rwandans to perish.[40]
From 1967 to 1969 large scale famine occurred in Biafra and Nigeria due to a government blockade of the Breakaway territory. It is estimated that 1.5 million people died of starvation due to this famine. Additionally, drought and other government interference with the food supply caused 500 thousand Africans to perish in Central and West Africa.[45]
Famine recurred in the early 1970s, when Ethiopia and the west African
Famines occurred in Sudan in the late-1970s and again in 1990 and 1998. The 1980 famine in Karamoja, Uganda was, in terms of mortality rates, one of the worst in history. 21% of the population died, including 60% of the infants.[46] In the 1980s, large scale multilayer drought occurred in the Sudan and Sahelian regions of Africa. This caused famine because even though the Sudanese Government believed there was a surplus of grain, there were local deficits across the region.[47]
In October 1984, television reports describing the Ethiopian famine as "biblical", prompted the
In 1992 Somalia became a war zone with no effective government, police, or basic services after the collapse of the dictatorship led by Siad Barre and the split of power between warlords. This coincided with a massive drought, causing over 300,000 Somalis to perish.[49]
Recent years
Since the start of the 21st century, more effective early warning and humanitarian response actions have reduced the number of deaths by famine markedly. That said, many African countries are not self-sufficient in food production, relying on income from cash crops to import food. Agriculture in Africa is susceptible to climatic fluctuations, especially droughts which can reduce the amount of food produced locally. Other agricultural problems include soil infertility, land degradation and erosion, swarms of desert locusts, which can destroy whole crops, and livestock diseases. Desertification is increasingly problematic: the Sahara reportedly spreads up to 48 kilometres (30 mi) per year.[50] The most serious famines have been caused by a combination of drought, misguided economic policies, and conflict. The 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia, for example, was the outcome of all these three factors, made worse by the Communist government's censorship of the emerging crisis. In Capitalist Sudan at the same date, drought and economic crisis combined with denials of any food shortage by the then-government of President Gaafar Nimeiry, to create a crisis that killed perhaps 250,000 people—and helped bring about a popular uprising that overthrew Nimeiry.
Numerous factors make the
Recent famines in Africa include the
Today, famine is most widespread in
Current initiatives
Against a backdrop of conventional interventions through the state or markets, alternative initiatives have been pioneered to address the problem of food security. One pan-African example is the Great Green Wall. Another example is the "Community Area-Based Development Approach" to agricultural development ("CABDA"), an NGO programme with the objective of providing an alternative approach to increasing food security in Africa. CABDA proceeds through specific areas of intervention such as the introduction of drought-resistant crops and new methods of food production such as agro-forestry. Piloted in Ethiopia in the 1990s it has spread to Malawi, Uganda, Eritrea and Kenya. In an analysis of the programme by the Overseas Development Institute, CABDA's focus on individual and community capacity-building is highlighted. This enables farmers to influence and drive their own development through community-run institutions, bringing food security to their household and region.[60]
The role of African Unity organization
The organization of African unity and its role in the African crisis has been interested in the political aspects of the continent, especially the liberation of the occupied parts of it and the elimination of racism. The organization has succeeded in this area but the economic field and development has not succeeded in these fields. African leaders have agreed to waive the role of their organization in the development to the United Nations through the Economic Commission for Africa "ECA".[61]
Far East
China
Chinese scholars had kept count of 1,828 instances of famine from 108 BC to 1911 in one province or another—an average of more than one famine per year.[62] A major famine from 1333 to 1337 killed 6 million. The four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 are said to have killed no fewer than 45 million people.[63][64]
China's
When a stressed monarchy shifted from state management and direct shipments of grain to monetary charity in the mid-19th century, the system broke down. Thus the 1867–68 famine under the Tongzhi Restoration was successfully relieved but the Great North China Famine of 1877–78, caused by drought across northern China, was a catastrophe. The province of Shanxi was substantially depopulated as grains ran out, and desperately starving people stripped forests, fields, and their very houses for food. Estimated mortality is 9.5 to 13 million people.[67]
Great Leap Forward 1958–1961
The largest famine of the 20th century was
The exact number of famine deaths during 1958–1961 is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 18 million[69] to at least 42 million[70] people, with a further 30 million cancelled or delayed births.[71] It was only when the famine had wrought its worst that Mao reversed agricultural collectivisation policies, which were effectively dismantled in 1978. China has not experienced a famine of the proportions of the Great Leap Forward since 1961.[72]
Japan
Japan experienced more than 130 famines between 1603 and 1868.[73]
Cambodia
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. The new government was led by Pol Pot, who desired to turn Cambodia into a communist, agrarian utopia. His regime emptied the cities, abolished currency and private property, and forced Cambodia's population into slavery on communal farms. In less than four years, the Khmer Rouge had executed nearly 1.4 million people, mostly those believed to be a threat to the new ideology.
Due to the failure of the Khmer Rouge's agrarian reform policies, Cambodia experienced widespread famine. As many as one million more died from starvation, disease, and exhaustion resulting from these policies.[74][75] In 1979 Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge from power. By that time about one quarter of Cambodia's population had been killed.
North Korean famine in the 1990s
Estimates based on the North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), North Korea is facing a serious cereal shortfall in 2017 after the country's crop harvest was diminished as a result of severe drought.[78] The FAO estimated that early-season production fell by over 30 percent compared to agricultural output from the previous year, leading to the country's worst famine since 2001.[79]
Vietnam
India
Owing to its almost entire dependence upon the monsoon rains, India is vulnerable to crop failures, which upon occasion deepen into famine.[81] There were 14 famines in India between the 11th and 17th centuries (Bhatia, 1985). For example, during the 1022–1033 Great famines in India entire provinces were depopulated. Famine in Deccan killed at least two million people in 1702–1704. B.M. Bhatia believes that the earlier famines were localised, and it was only after 1860, during the British rule, that famine came to signify general shortage of foodgrains in the country. There were approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in the south, and Bihar and Bengal in the east during the latter half of the 19th century.
Romesh Chunder Dutt argued as early as 1900, and present-day scholars such as Amartya Sen agree, that some historic famines were a product of both uneven rainfall and British economic and administrative policies, which since 1857 had led to the seizure and conversion of local farmland to foreign-owned plantations, restrictions on internal trade, heavy taxation of Indian citizens to support British expeditions in Afghanistan (see The Second Anglo-Afghan War), inflationary measures that increased the price of food, and substantial exports of staple crops from India to Britain. (Dutt, 1900 and 1902; Srivastava, 1968; Sen, 1982; Bhatia, 1985.)
Some British citizens, such as
The observations of the Famine Commission of 1880 support the notion that food distribution is more to blame for famines than food scarcity. They observed that each province in
Population growth worsened the plight of the peasantry. As a result of peace and improved sanitation and health, the Indian population rose from perhaps 100 million in 1700 to 300 million by 1920. While encouraging agricultural productivity, the British also provided economic incentives to have more children to help in the fields. Although a similar population increase occurred in Europe at the same time, the growing numbers could be absorbed by industrialization or emigration to the Americas and Australia. India enjoyed neither an industrial revolution nor an increase in food growing. Moreover, Indian landlords had a stake in the cash crop system and discouraged innovation. As a result, population numbers far outstripped the amount of available food and land, creating dire poverty and widespread hunger.
— Craig A. Lockard, Societies, Networks, and Transitions[85]
The Maharashtra drought saw zero deaths from starvation and is known for the successful employment of famine prevention policies, unlike during British rule.[86]
Middle East
the
In the early 20th century an Ottoman blockade of food being exported to Lebanon caused a famine which killed up to 450,000 Lebanese (about one-third of the population). The famine killed more people than the Lebanese Civil War. The blockade was caused by uprisings in the Syrian region of the Empire, including one which occurred in the 1860s which led to the massacre of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian by Ottoman Turks and local Druze.[88]
Europe
Middle Ages
The
Famine was a very destabilizing and devastating occurrence. The prospect of starvation led people to take desperate measures. When scarcity of food became apparent to peasants, they would sacrifice long-term prosperity for short-term survival. They would kill their
One famine would often lead to difficulties in the following years because of lack of seed stock or disruption of routine, or perhaps because of less-available labour. Famines were often interpreted as signs of God's displeasure. They were seen as the removal, by God, of His gifts to the people of the Earth. Elaborate religious processions and rituals were made to prevent God's wrath in the form of famine.
16th century
During the 15th century to the 18th century, famines in Europe became more frequent due to the
The 1590s saw the worst famines in centuries across all of Europe. Famine had been relatively rare during the 16th century. The economy and population had grown steadily as subsistence populations tend to when there is an extended period of relative peace (most of the time). Although peasants in areas of high population density, such as northern Italy, had learned to increase the yields of their lands through techniques such as promiscuous culture, they were still quite vulnerable to famines, forcing them to work their land even more intensively.
The great famine of the 1590s began a period of famine and decline in the 17th century. The price of grain, all over Europe was high, as was the population. Various types of people were vulnerable to the succession of bad harvests that occurred throughout the 1590s in different regions. The increasing number of wage labourers in the countryside were vulnerable because they had no food of their own, and their meager living was not enough to purchase the expensive grain of a bad-crop year. Town labourers were also at risk because their wages would be insufficient to cover the cost of grain, and, to make matters worse, they often received less money in bad-crop years since the disposable income of the wealthy was spent on grain. Often, unemployment would be the result of the increase in grain prices, leading to ever-increasing numbers of urban poor.
All areas of Europe were badly affected by the famine in these periods, especially rural areas. The Netherlands was able to escape most of the damaging effects of the famine, though the 1590s were still difficult years there. Amsterdam's grain trade with the Baltic guaranteed a food supply.
17th century
The years around 1620 saw another period of famine sweep across Europe. These famines were generally less severe than the famines of twenty-five years earlier, but they were nonetheless quite serious in many areas. Perhaps the worst famine since 1600, the great famine in Finland in 1696, killed one-third of the population.[95]
Devastating harvest failures afflicted the northern Italian economy from 1618 to 1621, and it did not recover fully for centuries. There were serious famines in the late-1640s and less severe ones in the 1670s throughout northern Italy.
Over two million people died in two famines in France between 1693 and 1710. Both famines were made worse by ongoing wars.[96]
As late as the 1690s, Scotland experienced famine which reduced the population of parts of Scotland by at least 15%.[97]
The
18th century
The period of 1740–1743 saw frigid winters and summer droughts, which led to famine across Europe and a major spike in mortality.[101] The winter 1740–41 was unusually cold, possibly because of volcanic activity.[102]
According to Scott and Duncan (2002), "Eastern Europe experienced more than 150 recorded famines between AD 1500 and 1700 and there were 100 hunger years and 121 famine years in Russia between AD 971 and 1974."[103]
The
There were sixteen good harvests and 111 famine years in northern Italy from 1451 to 1767.[105] According to Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland, "The Jesuits of Cagliari [in Sardinia] recorded years during the late 1500s 'of such hunger and so sterile that the majority of the people could sustain life only with wild ferns and other weeds' ... During the terrible famine of 1680, some 80,000 persons, out of a total population of 250,000, are said to have died, and entire villages were devastated".[106]
According to
19th century
Other areas of Europe have known famines much more recently. France saw famines as recently as the 19th century. The Great Famine in Ireland, 1846–1851, caused by the failure of the potato crop over a few years, resulted in 1,000,000 dead and another 2,000,000 refugees fleeing to Britain, Australia and the United States.[108]
20th century
Famine still occurred in
The Hunger Plan, i.e. the Nazi plan to starve large sections of the Soviet population, caused the deaths of many. The Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995 reported civilian victims in the USSR at German hands, including Jews, totalled 13.7 million dead, 20% of the 68 million persons in the occupied USSR. This included 4.1 million famine and disease deaths in occupied territory. There were an additional estimated 3 million famine deaths in areas of the USSR not under German occupation.[112]
The 872 days of the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944) caused unparalleled famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy and food supplies. This resulted in the deaths of about one million people.[113]
Famine also struck in
Latin America
The
Brazil's 1877–78 Grande Seca (Great Drought), the worst in Brazil's history,[116] caused approximately half a million deaths.[117] The one from 1915 was devastating too.[118]
Oceania
Easter Island was hit by a great famine between the 15th and 18th centuries. Hunger and subsequent cannibalism was caused by overpopulation and depletion of natural resources as a result of deforestation, partly because work on megalithic monuments required a lot of wood.[119]
There are other documented episodes of famine in various islands of Polynesia, such as occurred in Kau, Hawaii in 1868.[120]
According to Daniel Lord Smail, "'Famine cannibalism' was until recently a regular feature of life in the islands of the Massim near New Guinea and of some other societies of Southeast Asia and the Pacific."[121]
When Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue visited the Marshall Islands in Micronesia in 1817, he noted that Marshallese families practiced infanticide after the birth of a third child as a form of population planning due to frequent famines.[122]
Risk of future famine
The factual accuracy of parts of this article (those related to article) may be compromised due to out-of-date information. (December 2010) |
Beginning in the 20th century, nitrogen fertilizers, new pesticides, desert farming, and other agricultural technologies began to be used to increase food production, in part to combat famine. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution influenced agriculture world grain production increased by 250%. Developed nations have shared these technologies with developing nations with a famine problem. However, as early as 1995, there were signs that these new developments may contribute to the decline of arable land (e.g. persistence of pesticides leading to soil contamination, salt accumulation due to irrigation, erosion).
In 1994, David Pimentel, professor of ecology and
According to geologist
After China and India, there is a second tier of smaller countries with large water deficits – Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and Pakistan. Four of these already import a large share of their grain. Only Pakistan remains marginally self-sufficient. But with a population expanding by 4 million a year, it will also soon turn to the world market for grain.
Evan Fraser, a geographer at the
The
Western nations suspended humanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the country in August 2021.[155] The United States has frozen about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central banks,[156] blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. bank accounts.[157][158] In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage.[159] On 11 November 2021, the Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Programme has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity.[160]
Causes
Definitions of famines are based on three different categories—these include food supply-based, food consumption-based and mortality-based definitions. Some definitions of famines are:
- Blix – Widespread food shortage leading to significant rise in regional death rates.[162]
- Brown and Eckholm – Sudden, sharp reduction in food supply resulting in widespread hunger.[163]
- Scrimshaw – Sudden collapse in level of food consumption of large numbers of people.[164]
- Ravallion – Unusually high mortality with unusually severe threat to food intake of some segments of a population.[165]
- Cuny – A set of conditions that occurs when large numbers of people in a region cannot obtain sufficient food, resulting in widespread, acute malnutrition.[166]
Food shortages in a population are caused either by a lack of food or by difficulties in food distribution; it may be worsened by natural climate fluctuations and by extreme political conditions related to oppressive government or warfare. The conventional explanation until 1981 for the cause of famines was the Food availability decline (FAD) hypothesis. The assumption was that the central cause of all famines was a decline in food availability.[167] However, FAD could not explain why only a certain section of the population such as the agricultural laborer was affected by famines while others were insulated from famines.[168] Based on the studies of some recent famines, the decisive role of FAD has been questioned and it has been suggested that the causal mechanism for precipitating starvation includes many variables other than just decline of food availability. According to this view, famines are a result of entitlements, the theory being proposed is called the "failure of exchange entitlements" or FEE.[168] A person may own various commodities that can be exchanged in a market economy for the other commodities he or she needs. The exchange can happen via trading or production or through a combination of the two. These entitlements are called trade-based or production-based entitlements. Per this proposed view, famines are precipitated due to a breakdown in the ability of the person to exchange his entitlements.[168] An example of famines due to FEE is the inability of an agricultural laborer to exchange his primary entitlement, i.e., labor for rice when his employment became erratic or was eliminated.[168]
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), global climate change is additionally challenging the Earth's ability to produce food, potentially leading to famine.[169]
Some elements make a particular region more vulnerable to famine. These include poverty, population growth,[170] an inappropriate social infrastructure, a suppressive political regime, and a weak or under-prepared government.[171]
According to
Climate and population pressure
Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population has made popular the theory of the
The failure of a harvest or change in conditions, such as drought, can create a situation whereby large numbers of people continue to live where the carrying capacity of the land has temporarily dropped radically. Famine is often associated with subsistence agriculture. The total absence of agriculture in an economically strong area does not cause famine; Arizona and other wealthy regions import the vast majority of their food, since such regions produce sufficient economic goods for trade.
Famines have also been caused by volcanism. The 1815 eruption of the Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia caused crop failures and famines worldwide and caused the worst famine of the 19th century. The current consensus of the scientific community is that the aerosols and dust released into the upper atmosphere causes cooler temperatures by preventing the sun's energy from reaching the ground. The same mechanism is theorized to be caused by very large meteorite impacts to the extent of causing mass extinctions.
State-sponsored famines
In certain cases, such as the Great Leap Forward in China (which produced the largest famine in absolute numbers), North Korea in the mid-1990s, or Zimbabwe in the early-2000s, famine can occur because of government policy.
According to
Joseph Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin supports a similar view, stating that while "there is no question of Stalin's responsibility for the famine" and many deaths could have been prevented if not for the "insufficient" and counterproductive Soviet measures, there is no evidence for Stalin's intention to kill the Ukrainians deliberately.[191] While Mark Tauger considers the famine to be the result of natural factors stating that "the harsh 1932–1933 procurements only displaced the famine from urban areas" but the low harvest "made a famine inevitable". Ultimately concluding that it is difficult to accept the famine "as the result of the 1932 grain procurements and as a conscious act of genocide" he still concurs with Wheatcroft that "the regime was still responsible for the deprivation and suffering of the Soviet population in the early 1930s", and "if anything, these data show that the effects of [collectivization and forced industrialization] were worse than has been assumed."[192]
In 1958 in China, Mao Zedong's Communist Government launched the Great Leap Forward campaign, aimed at rapidly industrializing the country.[193] The government forcibly took control of agriculture. Barely enough grain was left for the peasants, and starvation occurred in many rural areas. Exportation of grain continued despite the famine and the government attempted to conceal it. While the famine is attributed to unintended consequences, it is believed that the government refused to acknowledge the problem, thereby further contributing to the deaths. In many instances, peasants were persecuted. Between 20 and 45 million people perished in this famine, making it one of the deadliest famines to date.[194]
Historian and journalists, such as Seumas Milne and Jon Wiener, have criticized the emphasis on communism when assigning blame for famines. In a 2002 article for The Guardian, Milne mentions "the moral blindness displayed towards the record of colonialism", and he writes: "If Lenin and Stalin are regarded as having killed those who died of hunger in the famines of the 1920s and 1930s, then Churchill is certainly responsible for the 4 million deaths in the avoidable Bengal famine of 1943.[195] Weiner makes a similar assertion while comparing the Holodomor and the Bengal famine of 1943, stating that Winston Churchill's role in the Bengal famine "seems similar to Stalin's role in the Ukrainian famine".[196] Historian Mike Davis, author of Late Victorian Holocausts, draws comparisons between the Great Chinese Famine and the Indian famines of the late 19th century, arguing that in both instances the governments which oversaw the response to the famines deliberately chose not to alleviate conditions and as such bear responsibility for the scale of deaths in said famines.[197] According to Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan, the number excess deaths during the apex of British colonialism in India rise to around 100 million.[198][199]
Malawi ended its famine by subsidizing farmers despite the strictures imposed by the
The
Israel's blockade of Gaza and the war between Israel and Hamas led to a famine in the Gaza Strip in 2024.[204] On 16 January 2024, UN experts accused Israel of "destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people".[205]
According to Amartya Sen (1999), "there has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy". Hasell and Roser have demonstrated that while there have been a few minor exceptions, famines rarely occur in democratic systems but are strongly correlated with autocratic and colonial systems.[206]
Economic sanctions
Famine prevention
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2021) |
Relief technologies, including immunization, improved public health infrastructure, general food rations and supplementary feeding for vulnerable children, has provided temporary mitigation to the mortality impact of famines, while leaving their economic consequences unchanged, and not solving the underlying issue of too large a regional population relative to food production capability. Humanitarian crises may also arise from genocide campaigns, civil wars, agro-terrorism, refugee flows and episodes of extreme violence and state collapse, creating famine conditions among the affected populations.
Despite repeated stated intentions by the world's leaders to end hunger and famine, famine remains a chronic threat in much of Africa, Eastern Europe, the Southeast, South Asia, and the Middle East. In July 2005, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) labelled Niger with emergency status, as well as Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe. In January 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that 11 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia were in danger of starvation due to the combination of severe drought and military conflicts.[212] In 2006, the most serious humanitarian crisis in Africa was in Sudan's region Darfur.
Noting that modern famines are sometimes aggravated by misguided economic policies, political design to impoverish or marginalize certain populations, or acts of war, political economists have investigated the political conditions under which famine is prevented. Economist Amartya Sen[note 3] states that the liberal institutions that exist in India, including competitive elections and a free press, have played a major role in preventing famine in that country since independence. Alex de Waal has developed this theory to focus on the "political contract" between rulers and people that ensures famine prevention, noting the rarity of such political contracts in Africa, and the danger that international relief agencies will undermine such contracts through removing the locus of accountability for famines from national governments.
The demographic impacts of famine are sharp. Mortality is concentrated among children and the elderly. A consistent demographic fact is that in all recorded famines, male mortality exceeds female, even in those populations (such as northern India and Pakistan) where there is a male longevity advantage during normal times. Reasons for this may include greater female resilience under the pressure of malnutrition, and possibly female's naturally higher percentage of body fat. Famine is also accompanied by lower fertility. Famines therefore leave the reproductive core of a population—adult women—lesser affected compared to other population categories, and post-famine periods are often characterized a "rebound" with increased births.
Even though the theories of
Overall food production
Globally, the amount of food produced per person has kept rising, despite a growing world population. A local crop failure does not cause a famine unless there is also a lack of money to buy food from elsewhere. A war or political oppression can also disrupt distribution of otherwise adequate global supplies.[214]
Food security
Long term measures to improve food security, include investment in modern agriculture techniques, such as
.World Bank strictures restrict government subsidies for farmers, and increasing use of fertilizers is opposed by some environmental groups because of its unintended consequences: adverse effects on water supplies and habitat.[200][216]
The effort to bring modern agricultural techniques found in the
The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by
The World Bank and some rich nations press nations that depend on them for aid to cut back or eliminate subsidized agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, in the name of privatization even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers.[223]
Relief
There is a growing realization among aid groups that giving cash or cash vouchers instead of food is a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way to deliver help to the hungry, particularly in areas where food is available but unaffordable.[224] The United Nations World Food Programme, the biggest non-governmental distributor of food, announced that it will begin distributing cash and vouchers instead of food in some areas, which Josette Sheeran, WFP's former executive director, described as a "revolution" in food aid.[224][225] The aid agency Concern Worldwide is piloting a method through a mobile phone operator, Safaricom, which runs a money transfer program that allows cash to be sent from one part of the country to another.[224]
However, for people in a
Deficient
WHO and other sources recommend that malnourished children—and adults who also have diarrhea—drink rehydration solution, and continue to eat, in addition to antibiotics, and zinc supplements.[231][232][233] There is a special oral rehydration solution called ReSoMal which has less sodium and more potassium than standard solution. However, if the diarrhea is severe, the standard solution is preferable as the person needs the extra sodium.[232] Obviously, this is a judgment call best made by a physician, and using either solution is better than doing nothing. Zinc supplements often can help reduce the duration and severity of diarrhea, and Vitamin A can also be helpful.[234] The World Health Organization underlines the importance of a person with diarrhea continuing to eat, with a 2005 publication for physicians stating: "Food should never be withheld and the child's usual foods should not be diluted. Breastfeeding should always be continued."[231]
Ethiopia has been pioneering a program that has now become part of the World Bank's prescribed recipe for coping with a food crisis and had been seen by aid organizations as a model of how to best help hungry nations. Through the country's main food assistance program, the Productive Safety Net Program, Ethiopia has been giving rural residents who are chronically short of food, a chance to work for food or cash. Foreign aid organizations like the World Food Program were then able to buy food locally from surplus areas to distribute in areas with a shortage of food.[235]
The Green Revolution was widely viewed as an answer to famine in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1950 and 1984, hybrid strains of high-yielding crops transformed agriculture around the globe and world grain production increased by 250%.[236] Some[who?] criticize the process, stating that these new high-yielding crops require more chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can harm the environment.[237] Although these high-yielding crops make it technically possible to feed more people, there are indications that regional food production has peaked in many world sectors, due to certain strategies associated with intensive agriculture such as groundwater overdrafting and overuse of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.
Levels of food insecurity
In modern times, local and political governments and non-governmental organizations that deliver famine relief have limited resources with which to address the multiple situations of food insecurity that are occurring simultaneously. Various methods of categorizing the gradations of food security have thus been used in order to most efficiently allocate food relief. One of the earliest were the Indian Famine Codes devised by the British in the 1880s. The Codes listed three stages of food insecurity: near-scarcity, scarcity and famine, and were highly influential in the creation of subsequent famine warning or measurement systems. The early warning system developed to monitor the region inhabited by the Turkana people in northern Kenya also has three levels, but links each stage to a pre-planned response to mitigate the crisis and prevent its deterioration
The experiences of famine relief organizations throughout the world over the 1980s and 1990s resulted in at least two major developments: the "livelihoods approach" and the increased use of nutrition indicators to determine the severity of a crisis. Individuals and groups in food stressful situations will attempt to cope by rationing consumption, finding alternative means to supplement income, etc., before taking desperate measures, such as selling off plots of agricultural land. When all means of self-support are exhausted, the affected population begins to migrate in search of food or fall victim to outright mass starvation. Famine may thus be viewed partially as a social phenomenon, involving markets, the price of food, and social support structures. A second lesson drawn was the increased use of rapid nutrition assessments, in particular of children, to give a quantitative measure of the famine's severity.
Since 2003, many of the most important organizations in famine relief, such as the
Society and culture
Famine personified as an
tradition.Effects on society
A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis has shown that prenatal famine exposure is associated with an increased risk of mental disorders (such as depression and schizophrenia) and changes in DNA methylation, that is further exacerbating the impact of famine on human health and nutrition.[238]
See also
- 2007–2008 world food price crisis
- Agriculture and population limits
- Atmit (a porridge used to fight famine)
- Democide
- Famine Early Warning Systems Network
- Food prices
- Food security
- Global Hunger Index
- List of famines
- Local food
- Malthusianism
- Nuclear winter
- Overpopulation
- Global catastrophic risk
- Right of asylum: protected grounds
- Starvation
- Subsistence crisis
- The vulture and the little girl: photo by Kevin Carter of a vulture lurking a famine-stricken Sudanesetoddler.
- World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (monthly report)
- World Food Programme
- World Vision Famine events
Footnotes
- ^ Initial reports erroneously gave the year 2035 rather than the correct 2350.
- ^ "We may well ask whether having revolutionarily high expectations is a crime? Of course it is, if it leads to an increase in the level of deaths, as a result of insufficient care being taken to safeguard the lives of those put at risk when the high ambitions failed to be fulfilled, and especially when it was followed by a cover-up. The same goes for not adjusting policy to unfolding evidence of crisis. But these are crimes of manslaughter and fraud rather than of murder. How heinous are they in comparison, say, with shooting over 600,000 citizens wrongly identified as enemies in 1937–8, or in shooting 25,000 Poles identified as a security risk in 1940, when there was no doubt as to the outcome of the orders? The conventional view is that manslaughter is less heinous than cold blooded murder."[188]
- ^ Sen is known for his assertion that famines do not occur in democracies in much the same way that Adam Smith is associated with the "invisible hand" and Joseph Schumpeter with "creative destruction".[213]
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External links
- 1980s Drought and Subsequent Food Crisis from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
- Morning Star Fishermen And The Race Against Hunger
- United Nations World Food Programme Hunger relief against poverty and famine
- International Food Policy Research Institute Sustainable solutions for ending hunger
- Cohne, Josh (28 February 2012). "Arable Land Shortage and the Case for Agriculture and Farmland Investing". Technorati.
- "In Depth: Africa's Food Crisis". BBC News. 21 September 2007.
- Dugger, Celia W. (31 March 2006). "Overfarming African Land Is Worsening Hunger Crisis". The New York Times.
- "Food Security: A Review of Literature from Ethiopia to India" (Geopolicity)
- Marcus, David (2003). "Famine Crimes in International Law". The American Journal of International Law.
- Sachs, Jeffrey (26 October 1998). The Real Causes of Famine". Time.