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If a pandemic causes a high mortality amongst farmers and truckers, shortages of food will likely occur in all countries. Some parts of the world just might suffer a famine as a result of the food shortages.
Famine
Famine is defined as an extreme shortage of food or lack of access to food by a population, accompanied by an increase in death rates. Deaths during famine occur not only due to malnutrition, but also from infectious diseases to which malnutrition predisposes the population and from the social ills brought about by food shortage. Famine is a true public health emergency, and unfortunately has been a common human experience throughout history. The fundamental menace of famine is expressed in the Biblical reference to the "four horsemen of the apocalypse"?meaning famine, pestilence (disease), war, and death.
There have been thousands of famines over the last several centuries. The causes have included natural disasters such as droughts and floods; war, civil strife, and population displacement; and economic failure. In spite of the fact that worldwide food production has improved in the past several decades, and that global food supplies are sufficient to feed the world's current population, an estimated 20 percent of people in developing countries?more than 800 million people?lack access to enough food on a regular and predictable basis. The number of countries experiencing severe food shortages has almost tripled since 1990. Compared to poverty, which is the most common cause of malnutrition worldwide, famine is preventable. Access to food has been repeatedly recognized as a basic human right. Promotion of this right requires international cooperation and a coordinated effort.
Causes of Famine
The immediate causes of famine are inadequate food production or market availability, price fluctuations, and limited household assets. Underlying causes, however, almost always involve misguided or deliberate public policy, repressive political systems, or natural or human-caused disaster. In countries with preexisting widespread poverty, unemployment, or debt, natural and human-caused disasters are the most common causes of food shortages and famine. Additionally, hunger has been often used as a deliberate weapon. Access to food is such a basic human need that control of the food supply translates into direct political and economic power. Over and over again in history, specific populations have been the victims of an interruption of their food supply with the intent to subdue them or drive them away.
An example of the chain of events that leads to a "natural" famine (not the direct result of war or civil strife) is a poor harvest due to a drought or flood, resulting in reduced wages and rising food prices. The overall result is a decline in both food availability and food access.
Large famines caused millions of deaths in the early 1930s in the Ukraine, and in 1959?1961 in China; both occurred due to policies that resulted in reduced food availability. One of the most recent tragedies with regard to food shortage began in the mid-1990s in North Korea, where a steady economic decline and a series of floods, droughts, and failed harvests was superimposed on the economic blow brought about by the abrupt end of preferential trade with the former Soviet Union. A closed governmental system has limited humanitarian aid in this situation.
War and civil strife are two of the greatest causes of famine. Armies destroy crops and consume available food. Mass migration is also common for those living in war zones. Civil wars often cause famine, as everyone within the country is affected. Famines due to war occurred in Holland in 1945, the Sudan in 1988, Somalia in 1991, and a large famine in Zaire in 1991 was due to civil war. Severe food deprivation characterized the ethnic conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa in the late 1990s. The Bosnian war of 1998 included deliberate interruption of the flow of basic food supplies to the Kosovar population.
Finally, there are several parts of the world where famines occur on a regular basis. Much of Africa and Southeast Asia are subject to repeated food shortages. Nations in these areas are chronically vulnerable to changes in weather, or they have unstable political situations. India suffered recurrent famines up until the time of independence from colonial rule in the mid?twentieth century, but has not experienced a major famine since that time, illustrating that prevention is possible even in chronically famine-prone areas.
Consequences of Famine
The consequences of famine are physical, psychological, social, and economic. Malnutrition results from food shortage within weeks. Children fail to grow and cannot learn in school, and both adults and children experience weight loss, lack of energy, and decreased work ability. Permanent blindness can result from vitamin A deficiency that accompanies a deterioration of dietary quality. Malnutrition also puts people at a high risk of dying from common infectious illnesses. Diseases such as measles, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea are the most common causes of death during famine. Psychological impacts result from fear and uncertainty about having enough to eat or to feed one's family. Socially, migration is a common occurrence during periods of famine, and resettling in other areas or in refugee camps disrupts social relationships and hierarchies. Lack of food also creates disharmony as people resort to desperate measures (such as stealing) in order to eat, or when old conflicts are renewed due to some groups having more food than others. Losing land ownership and selling valuable assets such as livestock, jewelry, or other goods can prevent families from recovering financially after a famine.
Responses to Famine
Responses to famine take place at the individual, governmental, and international level. At the individual level, families go through a series of progressively more drastic coping behaviors. First, food consumption becomes more restricted, and households attempt to generate more income to purchase food. Adults will usually restrict their own food consumption in order to protect children. Typically, adults take on extra jobs and unemployed family members enter the labor force to earn additional money. If the stress continues, families borrow or accept donations from friends, relatives, or government agencies, and they may sell household items, livestock, or even vital assets such as seeds and land in order to obtain money to buy food. In extreme cases, people leave their homes and migrate to other areas in order to survive.
Responses at the government level depend upon how early an impending famine is detected and how prepared a government is to respond to the situation. For example, in Rajasthan, India, there is a governmental system of grain storage that can be distributed during periods of shortage. There are also programs in place for public works projects so that people can work for food during a crisis period. Furthermore, investment in roads, trains, and communications helps get food to people faster in times of need. In contrast, most of sub-Saharan Africa has little in the way of effective government antifamine plans and policies. Most of the sharing and distribution of food reserves takes place on an individual or community basis, and most countries do not have food stocks to distribute in case of emergency. Food must be imported, which is expensive, or countries are forced to rely on international food aid when famine threatens.
Many organizations provide food aid to countries and individuals during famines. The World Food Programme of the United Nations is the largest international mechanism for providing food aid where it is needed; up to date information can be found at the program's web site, http://www.wfp.org. The Hunger Site, at http://www.thehungersite.com, provides a world map where each click on a location is linked to donations from multiple donors to the World Food Programme. Many other governmental and nongovernmental organizations are also involved in responding to food emergencies as they arise.
Preventing Famine
Famine can be prevented in several ways. One strategy is to pay more attention to environmental issues, such as the rotation of crops to help to keep the soil rich in nutrients or maintaining vegetative growth in fields year-round to keep soil from being blown or washed away. New agricultural technologies, including new fertilizers and pesticides and genetically improved crops, can also help avoid famine without harming the environment. Storing food during years of good harvest and redistribution of extra food and seeds to those who need them is another way of maintaining a food reserve. Finally, communication and coordination among communities and governments in need is essential to help prevent famine. Governments in famine-prone areas need to be able to predict in advance what areas may be vulnerable, assess needs, obtain food and necessary supplies, and transport these items to food-short areas in a timely manner. In Africa, a system called the Famine Early Warning System has had success in famine prevention. This program uses several methods to assess impending risks of famine. The program monitors weather in Africa and uses satellite photographs to see if plants are healthy or deteriorating. It also monitors crop growth, food availability, and prices in local markets.
Famines due to "natural" causes can be avoided through coordinated effort to keep governments and people alert and prepared and to provide mechanisms for people to get food when they need it. Food emergencies caused by war, civil strife, and political will depend on recognition of and respect for the fundamental right to food as a basic human right, and on enforcement of this principle in international law.
Bibliography
Action Against Hunger (2001). The Geopolitics of Hunger, 2000?2001: Hunger and Power. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1998). The Right to Food in Theory and Practice. New York: United Nations.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service (1992). "Famine-Affected, Refugee and Displaced Populations: Recommendations for Public Health Issues." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 41:1?76.
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Quotes:
"There was no corn -- in the wide market-place all loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold; They weighed it in small scales -- and many a face was fixed in eager horror then; his gold the miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally -- as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing -- if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops." - Barbara Ehrenreich
"I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life." - Jonathan Swift
"Half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies." - Charles Churchill
"There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth." - T. S. Eliot
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Wikipedia
famine
A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality. Although many famines coincide with national or regional shortages of food, famine has also occurred amid plenty or on account of acts of economic or military policy that have deprived certain populations of sufficient food to ensure survival. Historically, famines have occurred because of drought, crop failure and pestilence, and because of man-made causes such as war or misguided economic policies. During the 20th century, an estimated 70 million people died from famines across the world, of whom fully 30 million died during the famine of 1958?61 in China. The other most terrible famines of the century included the 1942?1945 disaster in Bengal, famines in China in 1928 and 1942, and a sequence of man-made famines in the Soviet Union, including the Holodomor, Stalin's famine inflicted on Ukraine in 1932?33. The last great famines of the 20th century were the disaster in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Ethiopian famine of 1983?85 and the North Korean famine of the 1990s.
The conventional wisdom that attributed famine to a geographically-defined food shortage gave way in the 1980s to a more sophisticated view of famine as a failure of the poor to command sufficient resources to purchase essential food (the "entitlement theory" of Amartya Sen), analyses of famine that focused on the political-economic processes driving the creation of famine, an understanding of the complex reasons for mortality in famines, an appreciation of the extent to which famine-vulnerable communities have well-developed strategies for coping with the threat of famine, and the role of warfare in creating famine. Modern relief agencies categorize various gradations of famine according to a famine scale.
Many areas that suffered famines in the past have protected themselves through technological and social development. The first area in Europe to eliminate famine was the Netherlands, which saw its last peacetime famines in the early-17th century as it became a major economic power and established a complex political organization. Noting that most famines occur under dictatorship, colonial rule or during war, Amartya Sen has posited that no functioning democracy has suffered a famine in modern times.
Characteristics of famine
Famine today
Today, famine strikes Sub-Saharan African countries the hardest, but with ongoing wars, internal struggles, and economic failure, famine continues to be a worldwide problem with millions of individuals suffering. While these famines cause widespread malnutrition and impoverishment, no modern African famine (save Ethiopia in the 1980s) has come close to equalling the immense death tolls of the worst Asian famines of the 20th century. Modern African famines are characterised by widespread destitution and malnutrition, with heightened mortality confined to young children. Relief technologies including immunization, improved public health infrastructure, general food rations and supplementary feeding for vulnerable children, has blunted the mortality impacts of famines, while leaving their economic causes and consequences unchanged. Humanitarian crises also arise from civil wars, refugee flows and episodes of extreme violence and state collapse, creating famine conditions among the affected populations.
Despite repeated promises by the world's leaders to end hunger and famine, famine remains a chronic threat in much of Africa. In July 2005, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network 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. [1] In 2006, the most serious humanitarian crisis in Africa is in Sudan's region Darfur.
Many believe that the Green Revolution is still the answer to famine. The Green Revolution began in the 20th century with hybrid strains of high-yielding crops. Not only does this contribute to a larger amount of the crop, but it can also stabilize production. Some criticize the process, stating that these new high-yielding crops require more chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can harm the environment. However, it may be an option for developing nations suffering from famine, and these crops can be bred as to adapt to the conditions of the country. These high-yielding crops make it technically possible to feed the world and eliminate famine. They can be developed to provide optimal nutrition, and a well-nourished, well-developed population would emerge. Some say that the problems of famine and ill-nourishment are the results of ethical dilemmas over using the technologies we have, as well as cultural and class differences.
Frances Moore Lapp?, later co-founder of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) argued in Diet for a Small Planet (1971) that vegetarian diets can provide food for larger populations, with the same resources, compared to omnivorous diets.
Noting that modern famines are invariably the outcome of misguided economic policies, political design to impoverish or marginalize certain populations, or deliberate acts of war, political economists have investigated the political conditions under which famine is prevented. Amartya Sen 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.
Causes of famine
Modern famines have often occurred in nations that, as a whole, were not initially suffering a shortage of food. The largest famine ever (proportional to the affected population) was the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845 and occurred as food was being shipped from Ireland to England because the English could afford to pay higher prices. The largest famine ever (in absolute terms) was the Chinese famine of 1959?60 that occurred as a result of the Great Leap Forward. In a similar manner, the 1973 famine in Ethiopia was concentrated in the Wollo region, although food was being shipped out of Wollo to the capital city of Addis Ababa where it could command higher prices. In contrast, at the same time that the citizens of the dictatorships of Ethiopia and Sudan had massive famines in the late-1970s and early-1980s, the democracies of Botswana and Zimbabwe avoided them, despite having worse drops in national food production. This was possible through the simple step of creating short-term employment for the worst-affected groups, thus ensuring a minimal amount of income to buy food, for the duration of the localized food disruption and was taken under criticism from opposition political parties and intense media coverage.
Because herding and agriculture allow for greater population, both in numbers and in density, the failure of a harvest or the change in conditions, such as drought, can create a situation whereby large numbers of people live where the carrying capacity of the land has dropped radically. Famine is then associated primarily with subsistence agriculture, that is, where most farming is aimed at producing enough food energy to survive. 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.
Disasters, whether natural or man-made, have been associated with conditions of famine ever since humankind has been keeping written records. The Torah describes how "seven lean years" consumed the seven fat years, and "plagues of locusts" could eat all of the available food stuffs. War, in particular, was associated with famine, particularly in those times and places where warfare included attacks on land, by burning fields, or on those who tilled the soil.
The demographic impacts of famine are sharp, if often short-lasting. 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 normal times male longevity advantage. Reasons for this may include greater female resilience under the pressure of malnutrition, and the fact that women are more skilled at gathering and processing wild foods and other fall-back famine foods. Famine is also accompanied by lower fertility. Famines therefore leave the reproductive core of a population?adult women?relatively untouched compared to other population categories, and post-famine periods are often characterized a "rebound" with increased births. Even though the theories of Thomas Malthus would predict that famines reduce the size of the population commensurate with available food resources, in fact even the most severe famines have rarely dented population growth for more than a few years. The mortality in China in 1958?61, Bengal in 1943, and Ethiopia in 1983?85 was all made up by a growing population over just a few years. Of greater long-term demographic impact is emigration: Ireland was chiefly depopulated after the 1840s famines by waves of emigration.
As observed by the economist Amartya Sen, famine is usually a problem of food distribution and poverty, rather than an absolute lack of food. In many cases, such as the Great Leap Forward, North Korea in the mid-1990s, or Zimbabwe in the early-2000s, famine can be caused as an unintentional result of government policy. Famine is sometimes used as a tool of repressive governments as a means to eliminate opponents, as in the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s. In other cases, such as Somalia, famine is a consequence of civil disorder as food distribution systems break down.
There are a number of ongoing famines caused by war or deliberate political intervention.
Today, nitrogen fertilizers, new pesticides, desert farming, and other agricultural technologies are being used as weapons against famine. These can increase crop yields by two, three, or more times. Developed nations occasionally share these technologies with developing nations with a famine problem, although there are often ideological arguments presented by environmentalists against doing so. This is often attributed to an association of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides with a lack of sustainability. In any case, these technological advances might not be influential in those famines which are the result of war. Similarly so, increased yield may not be helpful with certain distribution problems, especially those arising from political intervention.
Levels of food insecurity
Main article: Famine scales
In modern times, 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. Famine does not begin to kill people until it destroys livelihoods. 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. Only when all means of self-support are exhausted does the affected population begin to migrate in search of food and fall victim to outright starvation. Famine may thus be seen 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 2004, many of the most important organizations in famine relief, such as the World Food Programme and the U.S. Agency for International Development, have adopted a five-level scale measuring intensity and magnitude. The intensity scale uses both livelihoods' measures and measurements of mortality and child malnutrition to categorize a situation as food secure, food insecure, food crisis, famine, severe famine, and extreme famine. The number of deaths determines the magnitude designation, with under 1000 fatalities defining a "minor famine" and a "catastrophic famine" resulting in over 1,000,000 deaths.
Historical famine, by region
Famine in Africa
In the mid-22nd century BC, a sudden and short-lived climatic change that caused reduced rainfall resulted in several decades of drought in Upper Egypt. The resulting famine and civil strife is believed to have been a major cause of the collapse of the Old Kingdom. An account from the First Intermediate Period states, "All of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger and people were eating their children." Historians of African famine have documented repeated famines in Ethiopia and have explored the traditional mechanisms adopted by African societies to minimize risk and to provide food to the most vulnerable in times of crisis.
The colonial encounter saw Africa suffering numerous and widespread famines. Possibly the worst episode occurred in 1888 and succeeding years, as the epizootic rinderpest, introduced into Eritrea by infected cattle, spread southwards reaching ultimately as far as South Africa. In Ethiopia it was estimated that as much as 90% of the national herd died, rendering rich farmers and herders destitute overnight. This coincided with drought associated with an el Nino oscillation, human epidemics of smallpox, and in several countries, intense war. In Sudan the year 1888 is remembered as the worst famine in history, on account of these factors and also the exactions imposed by the Mahdist state. Colonial "pacification" efforts often caused severe famine, as for example 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, also impoverished the peasantry in many areas, such as northern Nigeria, contributing to greater vulnerability to famine when severe drought struck in 1913.
However, for the middle part of the 20th century, agriculturalists, economists and geographers did not consider Africa to be famine prone (they were much more concerned about Asia). 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. The specter of famine recurred only in the early 1970s, when Ethiopia and the west African Sahel suffered drought and famine. The Ethiopian famine of that time was closely linked to the crisis of feudalism in that country, and in due course helped to bring about the downfall of the Emperor Haile Selassie. The Sahelian famine was associated with the slowly-growing crisis of pastoralism in Africa, which has seen livestock herding decline as a viable way of life over the last two generations.
Since then, African famines have become more frequent, more widespread and more severe. 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, and swarms of desert locusts which can destroy whole crops and livestock diseases. 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 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 food security situation in Africa tenuous, including political instability, armed conflict and civil war, corruption and mismanagement in handling food supplies, and trade policies that harm African agriculture. An example of a famine created by human rights abuses is the 1998 Sudan famine. AIDS is also having long-term economic effects on agriculture by reducing the available workforce, and is creating new vulnerabilities to famine by overburdening poor households. On the other hand, in the modern history of Africa on quite a few occasions famines acted as a major source of acute political instability.
Recent examples include Ethiopia in 1973 and mid-1980s, 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.
Famine in Asia
China
Chinese officials engaged in famine relief, 19th C. engravingChina's Qing Dynasty bureaucracy, which devoted extensive attention to minimizing famines, is credited with averting a series of famines following El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation-linked droughts and floods. These events are comparable, though somewhat smaller in scale, to the ecological trigger events of China's vast 19th Century famines. (Pierre-Etienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine) Qing China carried out its relief efforts, which included vast shipments of food, a requirement that the rich open their storehouses to the poor, and price regulation, as part of a state guarantee of subsistence to the peasantry (known as ming-sheng).
When a stressed monarchy shifted from state management and direct shipments of grain to monetary charity in the mid-nineteenth century, the system broke down. Thus the 1867?68 famine under the Tongzhi Restoration was successfully relieved but the 1877?78 famine, caused by drought across northern China, was a vast 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.(Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts)
Great Leap Foward
Main article: Great Leap Forward
The largest famine of the 20th century, and almost certainly of all time, was the 1958?61 Great Leap Forward famine in China. The immediate causes of this famine lay in Chairman Mao Zedong's ill-fated attempt to transform China from an agricultural nation to an industrial power in one huge leap. In pursuit of this vision, Communist Party cadres across China insisted that peasants abandon their farms for collective farms, and begin to produce steel in small foundries, often melting down their farm instruments in the process. Collectivization undermined incentives for the investment of labor and resources in agriculture; unrealistic plans for decentralized metal production sapped needed labor; unfavorable weather conditions; and communal dining halls encouraged overconsumption of available food (see Chang, G, and Wen, G (1997), "Communal dining and the Chinese Famine 1958-1961" ). Such was the centralized control of information and the intense pressure on party cadres to report only good news?such as production quotas met or exceeded?that information about the escalating disaster was effectively suppressed. When the leadership did become aware of the scale of the famine, it did little to respond, and continued to ban any discussion of the cataclysm. This blanket suppression of news was so effective that very few Chinese citizens were aware of the scale of the famine, and the greatest peacetime demographic disaster of the 20th century only became widely known twenty years later, when the veil of censorship began to lift.
The 1958?61 famine is estimated to have caused excess mortality of about 30 million, with a further 30 million cancelled or delayed births. It was only when the famine had wrought its worst that Mao reversed the agricultural collectivization policies, which were effectively dismantled in 1978. China has not experienced a major famine since 1961 (Woo-Cummings, 2002).
India
Main article: Famine in India
There were 14 famines in India between 11th and 17th century (Bhatia, 1985). 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, killing between 30 and 40 million Indians.
Romesh Dutt argued as early as 1900, and present-day scholars such as Amartya Sen agree, that the 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 unsuccessful 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 William Digby, agitated for policy reforms and famine relief, but Lord Lytton, the governing British viceroy in India, opposed such changes in the belief that they would stimulate shirking by Indian workers. The first, the Bengal famine of 1770, is estimated to have taken around 10 million lives ? nearly one-third of Bengal's population at the time. The famines continued until independence in 1947, with the Bengal Famine of 1943?44?among the most devastating?killing 3 million to 4 million Indians during World War II.
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 British India, including Burma, had a surplus of foodgrains, and the annual surplus was 5.16 million tons (Bhatia, 1970). At that time, annual export of rice and other grains from India was approximately one million tons.
In 1966, there was a close call in Bihar, when the United States allocated 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine.
North Korea
Famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990s, set off by unprecedented floods. This autarkic urban, industrial society had achieved food self-sufficiency in prior decades through a massive industrialization of agriculture. However, the economic system relied on massive concessionary inputs of fossil fuels, primarily from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. When the Soviet collapse and China's marketization switched trade to a hard currency, full price basis, North Korea's economy collapsed. The vulnerable agricultural sector experienced a massive failure in 1995?96, expanding to full-fledged famine by 1997?99. Hundreds of thousands if not millions died of starvation (estimates range from 200,000 to 3.5 million). North Korea has not yet resumed its food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aid from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Recently, North Korea requested that food supplies are no-longer delivered. (Woo-Cummings, 2002)
Vietnam
Various famines have occurred in Vietnam. Japanese occupation during World War II caused the Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which caused 2 million deaths. Following the unification of the country after the Vietnam War, Vietnam briefly experienced a food crisis in the 1980s, which prompted many people to flee the country.
Famine in Europe
Western Europe
The Great Famine of 1315?1317 (or to 1322) was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the 14th century, millions in northern Europe would die over an extended number of years, marking a clear end to the earlier period of growth and prosperity during the 11th and 12th centuries. Starting with bad weather in the spring of 1315, universal crop failures lasted until the summer of 1317, from which Europe did not fully recover until 1322. It was a period marked by extreme levels of criminal activity, disease and mass death, infanticide, and cannibalism. It had consequences for Church, State, European society and future calamities to follow in the 14th century.
The seventeenth century was a period of change for the food producers of Europe. For centuries they had lived primarily as subsistence farmers in a feudal system. They had obligations to their lords, who had suzerainty over the land tilled by their peasants. The lord of a fief would take a portion of the crops and livestock produced during the year. Peasants generally tried to minimize the amount of work they had to put into agricultural food production. Their lords rarely pressured them to increase their food output, except when the population started to increase, at which time the peasants were likely to increase the production themselves. More land would be added to cultivation until there was no more available and the peasants were forced to take up more labour-intensive methods of production. Nonetheless, they generally tried to work as little as possible, valuing their time to do other things, such as hunting, fishing or relaxing, as long as they had enough food to feed their families. It was not in their interest to produce more than they could eat or store themselves.
During the seventeenth century, continuing the trend of previous centuries, there was an increase in market-driven agriculture. Farmers, people who rented land in order to make a profit off of the product of the land, employing wage labour, became increasingly common, particularly in western Europe. It was in their 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. Farmers paid their labourers in money, increasing the commercialization of rural society. This commercialization had a profound impact on the behaviour of peasants. Farmers were interested in increasing labour input into their lands, not decreasing it as subsistence peasants were.
Subsistence peasants were also increasingly forced to commercialize their activities because of increasing taxes. Taxes that had to be paid to central governments in money forced the peasants to produce crops to sell. Sometimes they produced industrial crops, but they would find ways to increase their production in order to meet both their subsistence requirements as well as their tax obligations. Peasants also used the new money to purchase manufactured goods. The agricultural and social developments encouraging increased food production were gradually taking place throughout the sixteenth century, but were spurred on more directly by the adverse conditions for food production that Europe found itself in the early seventeenth century ? there was a general cooling trend in the Earth's temperature starting at the beginning end of the sixteenth century.
The 1590s saw the worst famines in centuries across all of Europe, except in certain areas, notably the Netherlands. Famine had been relatively rare during the sixteenth 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). Subsistence peasant populations will almost always increase when possible since the peasants will try to spread the work to as many hands as possible. 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.
Famine is 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 draught animals, leading to lowered production in subsequent years. They would eat their seed corn, sacrificing next year's crop in the hope that more seed could be found. Once those means had been exhausted, they would take to the road in search of food. They migrated to the cities where merchants from other areas would be more likely to sell their food, as cities had a stronger purchasing power than did rural areas. Cities also administered relief programs and bought grain for their populations so that they could keep order. With the confusion and desperation of the migrants, crime would often follow them. Many peasants resorted to banditry in order to acquire enough to eat.
One famine would often lead to difficulties in 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.
The great famine of the 1590s began the period of famine and decline in the seventeenth 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. Actual famine did not occur, for the Amsterdam grain trade [with the Baltic] guaranteed that there would always be something to eat in the Netherlands although hunger was prevalent.
The Netherlands had the most commercialized agriculture in all of Europe at this time, growing many industrial crops, such as flax, hemp, and hops. Agriculture became increasingly specialized and efficient. As a result, productivity and wealth increased, allowing the Netherlands to maintain a steady food supply. By the 1620s, the economy was even more developed, so the country was able to avoid the hardships of that period of famine with even greater impunity.
The years around 1620 saw another period of famines 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 a third of the population.
The period of 1740?43 saw frigid winters and summer droughts which led to famine across Europe leading to a major spike in mortality.(cited in Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 281)
Other areas of Europe have known famines much more recently. France saw famines as recently as the nineteenth century. Famine still occurred in eastern Europe during the 20th century.
Depiction of victims of the Irish Potato Famine (1845?1849)The frequency of famine can vary with climate changes. For example, during the little ice age of the 15th century to the 18th century, European famines grew more frequent than they had been during previous centuries.
Because of the frequency of famine in many societies, it has long been a chief concern of governments and other authorities. In pre-industrial Europe, preventing famine, and ensuring timely food supplies, was one of the chief concerns of many governments, which employed various tools to alleviate famines, including price controls, purchasing stockpiles of food from other areas, rationing, and regulation of production. Most governments were concerned by famine because it could lead to revolt and other forms of social disruption.
In contrast, the Irish Potato Famine (1845?1849) was in no small part the result of policies of the Whig government of the United Kingdom under Lord Russell. Unlike a government facing revolt at home, the London-based government stood by its commitment to laissez-faire economics, even in the face of massive starvation in Ireland.
Famine returned to the Netherlands during World War II, in what was known as the Hongerwinter, it was the last famine of Europe, approximately 30,000 people died of starvation. Some other areas of Europe also experienced famine at the same time.
Italy
The harvest failures were devastating for the northern Italian economy. The economy of the area had recovered well from the previous famines, but the famines from 1618 to 1621 coincided because of a period of war in the area. The economy did not recover fully for centuries. There were serious famines in the late-1640s and less severe ones in the 1670s throughout northern Italy.
England
From 1536 England began legislating Poor Laws which put a legal responsibility on the rich, at a parish level, to maintain the poor of that parish. English agriculture lagged behind the Netherlands, but by 1650 their agricultural industry was commercialized on a wide scale. The last peace-time famine in England was in 1623?24. There were still periods of hunger, as in the Netherlands, but there were no more famines as such. Rising population levels continued to put a strain on food security, despite potatoes becoming increasingly important in the diet of the poor. On balance, potatoes increased food security in England where they never replaced bread as the staple of the poor. Climate conditions were never likely to simultaneously be catastrophic for both the wheat and potato crops.
Iceland
In 1783 the volcano Laki in south-central Iceland erupted. The lava caused little direct damage, but ash and sulfur dioxide spewed out over most of the country, causing three-quarters of the island's livestock to perish. In the following famine, around ten thousand people died, one-fifth of the population of Iceland. [Asimov, 1984, 152-153]
Russia and USSR
Main article: Famines in Russia and USSR
Droughts and famines in Imperial Russia are known to have happened every 10 to 13 years, with average droughts happening every 5 to 7 years. Famines continued in the Soviet era, the most famous one being the Holodomor in Ukraine (1932?1933), a man-made famine (called by many respected historians a "genocide") created by artificially high agricultural quotas imposed by the Soviet government on peasants resisting collectivization, killing some 7?10 million Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine and the North Caucasus. The last major famine in the USSR happened in 1947 due to the severe drought.
Ottoman Armenia
Main article: Armenian Genocide
As high as 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire died as a result of the Armenian Genocide. Many died of famine and malnutrition. Western politicians and media referred to these victims as the "Starving Armenians."
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Famine
Famine is defined as an extreme shortage of food or lack of access to food by a population, accompanied by an increase in death rates. Deaths during famine occur not only due to malnutrition, but also from infectious diseases to which malnutrition predisposes the population and from the social ills brought about by food shortage. Famine is a true public health emergency, and unfortunately has been a common human experience throughout history. The fundamental menace of famine is expressed in the Biblical reference to the "four horsemen of the apocalypse"?meaning famine, pestilence (disease), war, and death.
There have been thousands of famines over the last several centuries. The causes have included natural disasters such as droughts and floods; war, civil strife, and population displacement; and economic failure. In spite of the fact that worldwide food production has improved in the past several decades, and that global food supplies are sufficient to feed the world's current population, an estimated 20 percent of people in developing countries?more than 800 million people?lack access to enough food on a regular and predictable basis. The number of countries experiencing severe food shortages has almost tripled since 1990. Compared to poverty, which is the most common cause of malnutrition worldwide, famine is preventable. Access to food has been repeatedly recognized as a basic human right. Promotion of this right requires international cooperation and a coordinated effort.
Causes of Famine
The immediate causes of famine are inadequate food production or market availability, price fluctuations, and limited household assets. Underlying causes, however, almost always involve misguided or deliberate public policy, repressive political systems, or natural or human-caused disaster. In countries with preexisting widespread poverty, unemployment, or debt, natural and human-caused disasters are the most common causes of food shortages and famine. Additionally, hunger has been often used as a deliberate weapon. Access to food is such a basic human need that control of the food supply translates into direct political and economic power. Over and over again in history, specific populations have been the victims of an interruption of their food supply with the intent to subdue them or drive them away.
An example of the chain of events that leads to a "natural" famine (not the direct result of war or civil strife) is a poor harvest due to a drought or flood, resulting in reduced wages and rising food prices. The overall result is a decline in both food availability and food access.
Large famines caused millions of deaths in the early 1930s in the Ukraine, and in 1959?1961 in China; both occurred due to policies that resulted in reduced food availability. One of the most recent tragedies with regard to food shortage began in the mid-1990s in North Korea, where a steady economic decline and a series of floods, droughts, and failed harvests was superimposed on the economic blow brought about by the abrupt end of preferential trade with the former Soviet Union. A closed governmental system has limited humanitarian aid in this situation.
War and civil strife are two of the greatest causes of famine. Armies destroy crops and consume available food. Mass migration is also common for those living in war zones. Civil wars often cause famine, as everyone within the country is affected. Famines due to war occurred in Holland in 1945, the Sudan in 1988, Somalia in 1991, and a large famine in Zaire in 1991 was due to civil war. Severe food deprivation characterized the ethnic conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa in the late 1990s. The Bosnian war of 1998 included deliberate interruption of the flow of basic food supplies to the Kosovar population.
Finally, there are several parts of the world where famines occur on a regular basis. Much of Africa and Southeast Asia are subject to repeated food shortages. Nations in these areas are chronically vulnerable to changes in weather, or they have unstable political situations. India suffered recurrent famines up until the time of independence from colonial rule in the mid?twentieth century, but has not experienced a major famine since that time, illustrating that prevention is possible even in chronically famine-prone areas.
Consequences of Famine
The consequences of famine are physical, psychological, social, and economic. Malnutrition results from food shortage within weeks. Children fail to grow and cannot learn in school, and both adults and children experience weight loss, lack of energy, and decreased work ability. Permanent blindness can result from vitamin A deficiency that accompanies a deterioration of dietary quality. Malnutrition also puts people at a high risk of dying from common infectious illnesses. Diseases such as measles, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea are the most common causes of death during famine. Psychological impacts result from fear and uncertainty about having enough to eat or to feed one's family. Socially, migration is a common occurrence during periods of famine, and resettling in other areas or in refugee camps disrupts social relationships and hierarchies. Lack of food also creates disharmony as people resort to desperate measures (such as stealing) in order to eat, or when old conflicts are renewed due to some groups having more food than others. Losing land ownership and selling valuable assets such as livestock, jewelry, or other goods can prevent families from recovering financially after a famine.
Responses to Famine
Responses to famine take place at the individual, governmental, and international level. At the individual level, families go through a series of progressively more drastic coping behaviors. First, food consumption becomes more restricted, and households attempt to generate more income to purchase food. Adults will usually restrict their own food consumption in order to protect children. Typically, adults take on extra jobs and unemployed family members enter the labor force to earn additional money. If the stress continues, families borrow or accept donations from friends, relatives, or government agencies, and they may sell household items, livestock, or even vital assets such as seeds and land in order to obtain money to buy food. In extreme cases, people leave their homes and migrate to other areas in order to survive.
Responses at the government level depend upon how early an impending famine is detected and how prepared a government is to respond to the situation. For example, in Rajasthan, India, there is a governmental system of grain storage that can be distributed during periods of shortage. There are also programs in place for public works projects so that people can work for food during a crisis period. Furthermore, investment in roads, trains, and communications helps get food to people faster in times of need. In contrast, most of sub-Saharan Africa has little in the way of effective government antifamine plans and policies. Most of the sharing and distribution of food reserves takes place on an individual or community basis, and most countries do not have food stocks to distribute in case of emergency. Food must be imported, which is expensive, or countries are forced to rely on international food aid when famine threatens.
Many organizations provide food aid to countries and individuals during famines. The World Food Programme of the United Nations is the largest international mechanism for providing food aid where it is needed; up to date information can be found at the program's web site, http://www.wfp.org. The Hunger Site, at http://www.thehungersite.com, provides a world map where each click on a location is linked to donations from multiple donors to the World Food Programme. Many other governmental and nongovernmental organizations are also involved in responding to food emergencies as they arise.
Preventing Famine
Famine can be prevented in several ways. One strategy is to pay more attention to environmental issues, such as the rotation of crops to help to keep the soil rich in nutrients or maintaining vegetative growth in fields year-round to keep soil from being blown or washed away. New agricultural technologies, including new fertilizers and pesticides and genetically improved crops, can also help avoid famine without harming the environment. Storing food during years of good harvest and redistribution of extra food and seeds to those who need them is another way of maintaining a food reserve. Finally, communication and coordination among communities and governments in need is essential to help prevent famine. Governments in famine-prone areas need to be able to predict in advance what areas may be vulnerable, assess needs, obtain food and necessary supplies, and transport these items to food-short areas in a timely manner. In Africa, a system called the Famine Early Warning System has had success in famine prevention. This program uses several methods to assess impending risks of famine. The program monitors weather in Africa and uses satellite photographs to see if plants are healthy or deteriorating. It also monitors crop growth, food availability, and prices in local markets.
Famines due to "natural" causes can be avoided through coordinated effort to keep governments and people alert and prepared and to provide mechanisms for people to get food when they need it. Food emergencies caused by war, civil strife, and political will depend on recognition of and respect for the fundamental right to food as a basic human right, and on enforcement of this principle in international law.
Bibliography
Action Against Hunger (2001). The Geopolitics of Hunger, 2000?2001: Hunger and Power. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1998). The Right to Food in Theory and Practice. New York: United Nations.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service (1992). "Famine-Affected, Refugee and Displaced Populations: Recommendations for Public Health Issues." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 41:1?76.
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Quotes:
"There was no corn -- in the wide market-place all loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold; They weighed it in small scales -- and many a face was fixed in eager horror then; his gold the miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally -- as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing -- if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops." - Barbara Ehrenreich
"I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life." - Jonathan Swift
"Half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies." - Charles Churchill
"There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth." - T. S. Eliot
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Wikipedia
famine
A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality. Although many famines coincide with national or regional shortages of food, famine has also occurred amid plenty or on account of acts of economic or military policy that have deprived certain populations of sufficient food to ensure survival. Historically, famines have occurred because of drought, crop failure and pestilence, and because of man-made causes such as war or misguided economic policies. During the 20th century, an estimated 70 million people died from famines across the world, of whom fully 30 million died during the famine of 1958?61 in China. The other most terrible famines of the century included the 1942?1945 disaster in Bengal, famines in China in 1928 and 1942, and a sequence of man-made famines in the Soviet Union, including the Holodomor, Stalin's famine inflicted on Ukraine in 1932?33. The last great famines of the 20th century were the disaster in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Ethiopian famine of 1983?85 and the North Korean famine of the 1990s.
The conventional wisdom that attributed famine to a geographically-defined food shortage gave way in the 1980s to a more sophisticated view of famine as a failure of the poor to command sufficient resources to purchase essential food (the "entitlement theory" of Amartya Sen), analyses of famine that focused on the political-economic processes driving the creation of famine, an understanding of the complex reasons for mortality in famines, an appreciation of the extent to which famine-vulnerable communities have well-developed strategies for coping with the threat of famine, and the role of warfare in creating famine. Modern relief agencies categorize various gradations of famine according to a famine scale.
Many areas that suffered famines in the past have protected themselves through technological and social development. The first area in Europe to eliminate famine was the Netherlands, which saw its last peacetime famines in the early-17th century as it became a major economic power and established a complex political organization. Noting that most famines occur under dictatorship, colonial rule or during war, Amartya Sen has posited that no functioning democracy has suffered a famine in modern times.
Characteristics of famine
Famine today
Today, famine strikes Sub-Saharan African countries the hardest, but with ongoing wars, internal struggles, and economic failure, famine continues to be a worldwide problem with millions of individuals suffering. While these famines cause widespread malnutrition and impoverishment, no modern African famine (save Ethiopia in the 1980s) has come close to equalling the immense death tolls of the worst Asian famines of the 20th century. Modern African famines are characterised by widespread destitution and malnutrition, with heightened mortality confined to young children. Relief technologies including immunization, improved public health infrastructure, general food rations and supplementary feeding for vulnerable children, has blunted the mortality impacts of famines, while leaving their economic causes and consequences unchanged. Humanitarian crises also arise from civil wars, refugee flows and episodes of extreme violence and state collapse, creating famine conditions among the affected populations.
Despite repeated promises by the world's leaders to end hunger and famine, famine remains a chronic threat in much of Africa. In July 2005, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network 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. [1] In 2006, the most serious humanitarian crisis in Africa is in Sudan's region Darfur.
Many believe that the Green Revolution is still the answer to famine. The Green Revolution began in the 20th century with hybrid strains of high-yielding crops. Not only does this contribute to a larger amount of the crop, but it can also stabilize production. Some criticize the process, stating that these new high-yielding crops require more chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can harm the environment. However, it may be an option for developing nations suffering from famine, and these crops can be bred as to adapt to the conditions of the country. These high-yielding crops make it technically possible to feed the world and eliminate famine. They can be developed to provide optimal nutrition, and a well-nourished, well-developed population would emerge. Some say that the problems of famine and ill-nourishment are the results of ethical dilemmas over using the technologies we have, as well as cultural and class differences.
Frances Moore Lapp?, later co-founder of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) argued in Diet for a Small Planet (1971) that vegetarian diets can provide food for larger populations, with the same resources, compared to omnivorous diets.
Noting that modern famines are invariably the outcome of misguided economic policies, political design to impoverish or marginalize certain populations, or deliberate acts of war, political economists have investigated the political conditions under which famine is prevented. Amartya Sen 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.
Causes of famine
Modern famines have often occurred in nations that, as a whole, were not initially suffering a shortage of food. The largest famine ever (proportional to the affected population) was the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845 and occurred as food was being shipped from Ireland to England because the English could afford to pay higher prices. The largest famine ever (in absolute terms) was the Chinese famine of 1959?60 that occurred as a result of the Great Leap Forward. In a similar manner, the 1973 famine in Ethiopia was concentrated in the Wollo region, although food was being shipped out of Wollo to the capital city of Addis Ababa where it could command higher prices. In contrast, at the same time that the citizens of the dictatorships of Ethiopia and Sudan had massive famines in the late-1970s and early-1980s, the democracies of Botswana and Zimbabwe avoided them, despite having worse drops in national food production. This was possible through the simple step of creating short-term employment for the worst-affected groups, thus ensuring a minimal amount of income to buy food, for the duration of the localized food disruption and was taken under criticism from opposition political parties and intense media coverage.
Because herding and agriculture allow for greater population, both in numbers and in density, the failure of a harvest or the change in conditions, such as drought, can create a situation whereby large numbers of people live where the carrying capacity of the land has dropped radically. Famine is then associated primarily with subsistence agriculture, that is, where most farming is aimed at producing enough food energy to survive. 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.
Disasters, whether natural or man-made, have been associated with conditions of famine ever since humankind has been keeping written records. The Torah describes how "seven lean years" consumed the seven fat years, and "plagues of locusts" could eat all of the available food stuffs. War, in particular, was associated with famine, particularly in those times and places where warfare included attacks on land, by burning fields, or on those who tilled the soil.
The demographic impacts of famine are sharp, if often short-lasting. 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 normal times male longevity advantage. Reasons for this may include greater female resilience under the pressure of malnutrition, and the fact that women are more skilled at gathering and processing wild foods and other fall-back famine foods. Famine is also accompanied by lower fertility. Famines therefore leave the reproductive core of a population?adult women?relatively untouched compared to other population categories, and post-famine periods are often characterized a "rebound" with increased births. Even though the theories of Thomas Malthus would predict that famines reduce the size of the population commensurate with available food resources, in fact even the most severe famines have rarely dented population growth for more than a few years. The mortality in China in 1958?61, Bengal in 1943, and Ethiopia in 1983?85 was all made up by a growing population over just a few years. Of greater long-term demographic impact is emigration: Ireland was chiefly depopulated after the 1840s famines by waves of emigration.
As observed by the economist Amartya Sen, famine is usually a problem of food distribution and poverty, rather than an absolute lack of food. In many cases, such as the Great Leap Forward, North Korea in the mid-1990s, or Zimbabwe in the early-2000s, famine can be caused as an unintentional result of government policy. Famine is sometimes used as a tool of repressive governments as a means to eliminate opponents, as in the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s. In other cases, such as Somalia, famine is a consequence of civil disorder as food distribution systems break down.
There are a number of ongoing famines caused by war or deliberate political intervention.
Today, nitrogen fertilizers, new pesticides, desert farming, and other agricultural technologies are being used as weapons against famine. These can increase crop yields by two, three, or more times. Developed nations occasionally share these technologies with developing nations with a famine problem, although there are often ideological arguments presented by environmentalists against doing so. This is often attributed to an association of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides with a lack of sustainability. In any case, these technological advances might not be influential in those famines which are the result of war. Similarly so, increased yield may not be helpful with certain distribution problems, especially those arising from political intervention.
Levels of food insecurity
Main article: Famine scales
In modern times, 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. Famine does not begin to kill people until it destroys livelihoods. 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. Only when all means of self-support are exhausted does the affected population begin to migrate in search of food and fall victim to outright starvation. Famine may thus be seen 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 2004, many of the most important organizations in famine relief, such as the World Food Programme and the U.S. Agency for International Development, have adopted a five-level scale measuring intensity and magnitude. The intensity scale uses both livelihoods' measures and measurements of mortality and child malnutrition to categorize a situation as food secure, food insecure, food crisis, famine, severe famine, and extreme famine. The number of deaths determines the magnitude designation, with under 1000 fatalities defining a "minor famine" and a "catastrophic famine" resulting in over 1,000,000 deaths.
Historical famine, by region
Famine in Africa
In the mid-22nd century BC, a sudden and short-lived climatic change that caused reduced rainfall resulted in several decades of drought in Upper Egypt. The resulting famine and civil strife is believed to have been a major cause of the collapse of the Old Kingdom. An account from the First Intermediate Period states, "All of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger and people were eating their children." Historians of African famine have documented repeated famines in Ethiopia and have explored the traditional mechanisms adopted by African societies to minimize risk and to provide food to the most vulnerable in times of crisis.
The colonial encounter saw Africa suffering numerous and widespread famines. Possibly the worst episode occurred in 1888 and succeeding years, as the epizootic rinderpest, introduced into Eritrea by infected cattle, spread southwards reaching ultimately as far as South Africa. In Ethiopia it was estimated that as much as 90% of the national herd died, rendering rich farmers and herders destitute overnight. This coincided with drought associated with an el Nino oscillation, human epidemics of smallpox, and in several countries, intense war. In Sudan the year 1888 is remembered as the worst famine in history, on account of these factors and also the exactions imposed by the Mahdist state. Colonial "pacification" efforts often caused severe famine, as for example 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, also impoverished the peasantry in many areas, such as northern Nigeria, contributing to greater vulnerability to famine when severe drought struck in 1913.
However, for the middle part of the 20th century, agriculturalists, economists and geographers did not consider Africa to be famine prone (they were much more concerned about Asia). 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. The specter of famine recurred only in the early 1970s, when Ethiopia and the west African Sahel suffered drought and famine. The Ethiopian famine of that time was closely linked to the crisis of feudalism in that country, and in due course helped to bring about the downfall of the Emperor Haile Selassie. The Sahelian famine was associated with the slowly-growing crisis of pastoralism in Africa, which has seen livestock herding decline as a viable way of life over the last two generations.
Since then, African famines have become more frequent, more widespread and more severe. 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, and swarms of desert locusts which can destroy whole crops and livestock diseases. 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 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 food security situation in Africa tenuous, including political instability, armed conflict and civil war, corruption and mismanagement in handling food supplies, and trade policies that harm African agriculture. An example of a famine created by human rights abuses is the 1998 Sudan famine. AIDS is also having long-term economic effects on agriculture by reducing the available workforce, and is creating new vulnerabilities to famine by overburdening poor households. On the other hand, in the modern history of Africa on quite a few occasions famines acted as a major source of acute political instability.
Recent examples include Ethiopia in 1973 and mid-1980s, 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.
Famine in Asia
China
Chinese officials engaged in famine relief, 19th C. engravingChina's Qing Dynasty bureaucracy, which devoted extensive attention to minimizing famines, is credited with averting a series of famines following El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation-linked droughts and floods. These events are comparable, though somewhat smaller in scale, to the ecological trigger events of China's vast 19th Century famines. (Pierre-Etienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine) Qing China carried out its relief efforts, which included vast shipments of food, a requirement that the rich open their storehouses to the poor, and price regulation, as part of a state guarantee of subsistence to the peasantry (known as ming-sheng).
When a stressed monarchy shifted from state management and direct shipments of grain to monetary charity in the mid-nineteenth century, the system broke down. Thus the 1867?68 famine under the Tongzhi Restoration was successfully relieved but the 1877?78 famine, caused by drought across northern China, was a vast 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.(Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts)
Great Leap Foward
Main article: Great Leap Forward
The largest famine of the 20th century, and almost certainly of all time, was the 1958?61 Great Leap Forward famine in China. The immediate causes of this famine lay in Chairman Mao Zedong's ill-fated attempt to transform China from an agricultural nation to an industrial power in one huge leap. In pursuit of this vision, Communist Party cadres across China insisted that peasants abandon their farms for collective farms, and begin to produce steel in small foundries, often melting down their farm instruments in the process. Collectivization undermined incentives for the investment of labor and resources in agriculture; unrealistic plans for decentralized metal production sapped needed labor; unfavorable weather conditions; and communal dining halls encouraged overconsumption of available food (see Chang, G, and Wen, G (1997), "Communal dining and the Chinese Famine 1958-1961" ). Such was the centralized control of information and the intense pressure on party cadres to report only good news?such as production quotas met or exceeded?that information about the escalating disaster was effectively suppressed. When the leadership did become aware of the scale of the famine, it did little to respond, and continued to ban any discussion of the cataclysm. This blanket suppression of news was so effective that very few Chinese citizens were aware of the scale of the famine, and the greatest peacetime demographic disaster of the 20th century only became widely known twenty years later, when the veil of censorship began to lift.
The 1958?61 famine is estimated to have caused excess mortality of about 30 million, with a further 30 million cancelled or delayed births. It was only when the famine had wrought its worst that Mao reversed the agricultural collectivization policies, which were effectively dismantled in 1978. China has not experienced a major famine since 1961 (Woo-Cummings, 2002).
India
Main article: Famine in India
There were 14 famines in India between 11th and 17th century (Bhatia, 1985). 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, killing between 30 and 40 million Indians.
Romesh Dutt argued as early as 1900, and present-day scholars such as Amartya Sen agree, that the 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 unsuccessful 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 William Digby, agitated for policy reforms and famine relief, but Lord Lytton, the governing British viceroy in India, opposed such changes in the belief that they would stimulate shirking by Indian workers. The first, the Bengal famine of 1770, is estimated to have taken around 10 million lives ? nearly one-third of Bengal's population at the time. The famines continued until independence in 1947, with the Bengal Famine of 1943?44?among the most devastating?killing 3 million to 4 million Indians during World War II.
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 British India, including Burma, had a surplus of foodgrains, and the annual surplus was 5.16 million tons (Bhatia, 1970). At that time, annual export of rice and other grains from India was approximately one million tons.
In 1966, there was a close call in Bihar, when the United States allocated 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine.
North Korea
Famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990s, set off by unprecedented floods. This autarkic urban, industrial society had achieved food self-sufficiency in prior decades through a massive industrialization of agriculture. However, the economic system relied on massive concessionary inputs of fossil fuels, primarily from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. When the Soviet collapse and China's marketization switched trade to a hard currency, full price basis, North Korea's economy collapsed. The vulnerable agricultural sector experienced a massive failure in 1995?96, expanding to full-fledged famine by 1997?99. Hundreds of thousands if not millions died of starvation (estimates range from 200,000 to 3.5 million). North Korea has not yet resumed its food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aid from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Recently, North Korea requested that food supplies are no-longer delivered. (Woo-Cummings, 2002)
Vietnam
Various famines have occurred in Vietnam. Japanese occupation during World War II caused the Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which caused 2 million deaths. Following the unification of the country after the Vietnam War, Vietnam briefly experienced a food crisis in the 1980s, which prompted many people to flee the country.
Famine in Europe
Western Europe
The Great Famine of 1315?1317 (or to 1322) was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the 14th century, millions in northern Europe would die over an extended number of years, marking a clear end to the earlier period of growth and prosperity during the 11th and 12th centuries. Starting with bad weather in the spring of 1315, universal crop failures lasted until the summer of 1317, from which Europe did not fully recover until 1322. It was a period marked by extreme levels of criminal activity, disease and mass death, infanticide, and cannibalism. It had consequences for Church, State, European society and future calamities to follow in the 14th century.
The seventeenth century was a period of change for the food producers of Europe. For centuries they had lived primarily as subsistence farmers in a feudal system. They had obligations to their lords, who had suzerainty over the land tilled by their peasants. The lord of a fief would take a portion of the crops and livestock produced during the year. Peasants generally tried to minimize the amount of work they had to put into agricultural food production. Their lords rarely pressured them to increase their food output, except when the population started to increase, at which time the peasants were likely to increase the production themselves. More land would be added to cultivation until there was no more available and the peasants were forced to take up more labour-intensive methods of production. Nonetheless, they generally tried to work as little as possible, valuing their time to do other things, such as hunting, fishing or relaxing, as long as they had enough food to feed their families. It was not in their interest to produce more than they could eat or store themselves.
During the seventeenth century, continuing the trend of previous centuries, there was an increase in market-driven agriculture. Farmers, people who rented land in order to make a profit off of the product of the land, employing wage labour, became increasingly common, particularly in western Europe. It was in their 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. Farmers paid their labourers in money, increasing the commercialization of rural society. This commercialization had a profound impact on the behaviour of peasants. Farmers were interested in increasing labour input into their lands, not decreasing it as subsistence peasants were.
Subsistence peasants were also increasingly forced to commercialize their activities because of increasing taxes. Taxes that had to be paid to central governments in money forced the peasants to produce crops to sell. Sometimes they produced industrial crops, but they would find ways to increase their production in order to meet both their subsistence requirements as well as their tax obligations. Peasants also used the new money to purchase manufactured goods. The agricultural and social developments encouraging increased food production were gradually taking place throughout the sixteenth century, but were spurred on more directly by the adverse conditions for food production that Europe found itself in the early seventeenth century ? there was a general cooling trend in the Earth's temperature starting at the beginning end of the sixteenth century.
The 1590s saw the worst famines in centuries across all of Europe, except in certain areas, notably the Netherlands. Famine had been relatively rare during the sixteenth 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). Subsistence peasant populations will almost always increase when possible since the peasants will try to spread the work to as many hands as possible. 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.
Famine is 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 draught animals, leading to lowered production in subsequent years. They would eat their seed corn, sacrificing next year's crop in the hope that more seed could be found. Once those means had been exhausted, they would take to the road in search of food. They migrated to the cities where merchants from other areas would be more likely to sell their food, as cities had a stronger purchasing power than did rural areas. Cities also administered relief programs and bought grain for their populations so that they could keep order. With the confusion and desperation of the migrants, crime would often follow them. Many peasants resorted to banditry in order to acquire enough to eat.
One famine would often lead to difficulties in 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.
The great famine of the 1590s began the period of famine and decline in the seventeenth 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. Actual famine did not occur, for the Amsterdam grain trade [with the Baltic] guaranteed that there would always be something to eat in the Netherlands although hunger was prevalent.
The Netherlands had the most commercialized agriculture in all of Europe at this time, growing many industrial crops, such as flax, hemp, and hops. Agriculture became increasingly specialized and efficient. As a result, productivity and wealth increased, allowing the Netherlands to maintain a steady food supply. By the 1620s, the economy was even more developed, so the country was able to avoid the hardships of that period of famine with even greater impunity.
The years around 1620 saw another period of famines 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 a third of the population.
The period of 1740?43 saw frigid winters and summer droughts which led to famine across Europe leading to a major spike in mortality.(cited in Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 281)
Other areas of Europe have known famines much more recently. France saw famines as recently as the nineteenth century. Famine still occurred in eastern Europe during the 20th century.
Depiction of victims of the Irish Potato Famine (1845?1849)The frequency of famine can vary with climate changes. For example, during the little ice age of the 15th century to the 18th century, European famines grew more frequent than they had been during previous centuries.
Because of the frequency of famine in many societies, it has long been a chief concern of governments and other authorities. In pre-industrial Europe, preventing famine, and ensuring timely food supplies, was one of the chief concerns of many governments, which employed various tools to alleviate famines, including price controls, purchasing stockpiles of food from other areas, rationing, and regulation of production. Most governments were concerned by famine because it could lead to revolt and other forms of social disruption.
In contrast, the Irish Potato Famine (1845?1849) was in no small part the result of policies of the Whig government of the United Kingdom under Lord Russell. Unlike a government facing revolt at home, the London-based government stood by its commitment to laissez-faire economics, even in the face of massive starvation in Ireland.
Famine returned to the Netherlands during World War II, in what was known as the Hongerwinter, it was the last famine of Europe, approximately 30,000 people died of starvation. Some other areas of Europe also experienced famine at the same time.
Italy
The harvest failures were devastating for the northern Italian economy. The economy of the area had recovered well from the previous famines, but the famines from 1618 to 1621 coincided because of a period of war in the area. The economy did not recover fully for centuries. There were serious famines in the late-1640s and less severe ones in the 1670s throughout northern Italy.
England
From 1536 England began legislating Poor Laws which put a legal responsibility on the rich, at a parish level, to maintain the poor of that parish. English agriculture lagged behind the Netherlands, but by 1650 their agricultural industry was commercialized on a wide scale. The last peace-time famine in England was in 1623?24. There were still periods of hunger, as in the Netherlands, but there were no more famines as such. Rising population levels continued to put a strain on food security, despite potatoes becoming increasingly important in the diet of the poor. On balance, potatoes increased food security in England where they never replaced bread as the staple of the poor. Climate conditions were never likely to simultaneously be catastrophic for both the wheat and potato crops.
Iceland
In 1783 the volcano Laki in south-central Iceland erupted. The lava caused little direct damage, but ash and sulfur dioxide spewed out over most of the country, causing three-quarters of the island's livestock to perish. In the following famine, around ten thousand people died, one-fifth of the population of Iceland. [Asimov, 1984, 152-153]
Russia and USSR
Main article: Famines in Russia and USSR
Droughts and famines in Imperial Russia are known to have happened every 10 to 13 years, with average droughts happening every 5 to 7 years. Famines continued in the Soviet era, the most famous one being the Holodomor in Ukraine (1932?1933), a man-made famine (called by many respected historians a "genocide") created by artificially high agricultural quotas imposed by the Soviet government on peasants resisting collectivization, killing some 7?10 million Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine and the North Caucasus. The last major famine in the USSR happened in 1947 due to the severe drought.
Ottoman Armenia
Main article: Armenian Genocide
As high as 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire died as a result of the Armenian Genocide. Many died of famine and malnutrition. Western politicians and media referred to these victims as the "Starving Armenians."
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