Famine

A famine is a phenomenon in which a large percentage of the population of a region or country is so undernourished that death by starvation or other related diseases becomes increasingly common. In spite of the much greater technological and economic resources of the modern world, famine still strikes many parts of the world, mostly in the developing nations. Famine is associated with naturally-occurring crop failure and pestilence and artificially with war and genocide. In the past few decades, a more nuanced view focused on the economic and political circumstances leading to modern famine has emerged. 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. A prominent economist on the subject, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, has noted that no functioning democracy has ever suffered a famine.

Causes of Famine

Famine can be defined as the “catastrophic disruption of the social, economic and institutional systems that provide for food production, distribution, and consumption.”. Famines kill not just masses of people, they also destroy livestock which people depend on as food and for their livelihood.

The devastations brought on by famines are not accountable to merely one single event in a region. Rather, famines are brought on by an accumulation of events and policies that carry both “natural” and “artificial” characteristics. Floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other such disasters are part of the “natural” causes which are out of human control and oftentimes can lead to famines. On the other hand, wars, civil strife, government’s poor management of resources and other similar events are viewed as the “artificial” causes which may also aid towards developing famine within a region. These events, both natural and artificial, do not generally work in isolation of one another. It is the combination of these causes which overtime, progressively erodes the capacity of countries and regions to deal with what could otherwise be "short-term shocks" to the land and its economy.

It is well known that there is a particularly strong relationship between droughts, the subsequent demise of agriculture and famines. Droughts in many well-developed countries do not contribute to famines. However, a drought coupled with most third world problems of over populated areas, the already existing inability to feed masses of people and poor healthcare facilities provided by governments, easily tips the scales towards the mass devastations which result from famines in many developing countries. Many countries that face famines tend to follow the trend of having poor healthcare and sanitation facilities for their people. Poor management of such government resources brings about additional problems of diseases such as meningitis, malaria and cholera. Under nourished people are naturally more susceptible to these diseases and thus, this only adds to the many factors which cause death and dismay in famine stricken regions.

Famines also have a very strong impact on demographics. It has been observed that periods of extensive famine can lead to a reduction in the number of reported female children in some cultures. Demographers and historians have debated the causes of this trend and some believe that parents deliberately select male children, through the process of infanticide, as they are perceived as being more valuable to society. Others believe that biological processes may be at work.

While famines may appear to be similar across the globe, the policies from which they may attain relief differ immensely according to their governments, regions and the intensity and length of the famines. One “optimal solution” cannot be identified as the main means to cure the region that is affected. It can be said that there is a “triangular relationship” between famines, economic/natural disasters or “natural” and artificial” causes and the actions of political regimes.

Historical Famine by Region

Famine in Africa

Somalians sit in the sun as they wait for food provided during Operation Provide Relief, Somalia, in 1992.

Famine has been widespread in many African countries as they are generally not self-sufficient in food production or relying on income from cash crops to import food. Agriculture in Africa is greatly susceptible to climatic fluctuations, especially droughts which reduces the amount of food produced locally. Other agricultural problems faced by many parts of the country include soil infertility, land degradation and erosion, swarms of desert locusts which often destroy whole crops and livestock.

Other factors contributing to the tenuous food security situation in Africa include, political instability, civil war and armed conflict, corruption and mismanagement in handling food supplies and trade policies that harm African agriculture. Sudden increases in food prices are an example of mismanaged government policies which play a major factor in contributing to extreme famines on the continent. Famines that occurred in Ethiopia in the 1980s and in Sudan in the 1990s, both experienced huge increases in food prices which contributed to their intensity. Famines on the African continent in areas such as Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia have unfortunately had a tendency to reoccur. These regions have faced famines on and off from the 1970s through to the 1990s.

Today these and other regions of Africa are still not famine free. May people in mostly rural areas of the country suffer from malnutrition and disease due to lack of food, poverty and poor agricultural development. AIDS and HIV are also contributing to long-term economic effects on agriculture by reducing the available workforce. Another major contributor to many reoccurring famines in Africa has been the acute political instability in numerous parts of the country. Political instability being a driving force of famines was seen in the famine of Karamoja, Uganda in 1980. This famine carries one of the worst mortality rates which has been recently recorded. 21% of the population of Karamoja died including 60% of infants.

Famine in Asia

China

Chinese officials engaged in famine relief, 19th C. engraving

China's history has experienced a few famines in the 19th Century. The shifts from monarchical rule to communist state rulings lead to an initial breakdown in the system of grain shipment and other foods and agricultural management. The famine under the Tongzhi Restoration between 1867 and 1868 was relatively short lived and successfully relieved. A subsequent famine occurred between 1877 to 1878. This was brought on mainly by drought across northern China. The province of Shanxi was strongly affected, as there were reports of massive depopulation due to grains running out. Desperate starving people stripped forests, fields, and even their very houses for food. The estimate mortality rate of this famine was between 9.5 to 13 million people.

Despite the tragedies of these famines no other famine has the reputation of being as great and devastating as the famine between 1958 to 1961. Known by many names, the “Great Leap Famine”, the “Three Terrible Years”, this was not just the worst that China ever faced, but also the worst famine ever in human history. This began with Mao Zedong and the Communist Party’s decision to launch the “Great Leap Forward”. This was an initiative to accomplish in China economic advances in just a few years what otherwise took other nations decades to achieve. Steel production along with Mao’s belief in Stalin’s collectivization of farming and food and production quota controls, became the order which the Chinese population had no choice but to follow. Although drought did come into play, the Communist’s agricultural policies enforced the largely man-made famine.

The “Three Terrible Years” strictly prohibited all private farming. The state dictated the methods of farming which peasants and others were forced to carryout in large collective farms. These agricultural and farming methods where drawn form pseudoscience which where known to have failed drastically with countries that had practiced them in the past. People who opposed the farming methods where viewed and persecuted as “rightist”. Unlike famines which tend to be localized and only affect a particular region, this famine struck the entire country. It is estimated between 30 to 40 million people died and due to the Chinese culture placing a low value on daughters, as many as a quarter who perished were young girls. Leading demographers found that during the famine, villages that experienced the worst starvation showed an unusually high rate of mental impairment among adults which were born during the famine.

The “Great Leap Famine” came to an end with the abandonment of Mao’s policies. However, the “Cultural Revolution” which Mao later launched, lead to the killing of many of those who took the stand to abandon Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” policies. China has since faced droughts, floods and other natural disasters. However, it had never since experienced a famine which is even remotely comparable to the that of the famine between 1958 to 1961.

India

There were a number of famines in India between the 11th and 17th centuries. The earlier famines were localized, and it was only after 1860, during the British rule in India, that famine came to signify a general shortage of food grains in the country. The Bengal famine of 1770, is estimated to have taken close to 10 million lives. That was nearly one-third of Bengal's population at the time. Famines were a product of both natural causes such as uneven rainfall, and man made causes brought on by British economic and administrative policies through out the region. Since 1857, British administrative policies in India 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, inflationary measures that increased the price of food and substantial exports of staple crops from India to Britain. Observations by the "Famine Commission" of 1880 supported the notion that food distribution was more to blame for famines than food scarcity. They observed that each province in British India, including Burma, had a surplus of food grains, and the annual surplus was 5.16 million tons. British citizens, such as William Digby, agitated for policy reforms and famine relief, but the governing British Viceroy of the time, Lord Lytton, opposed such changes with the belief that they would stimulate shirking by Indian workers.

Famines continued to persist in Colonial India until independence was gained in 1947. The last major famine to afflict India before its independence, was again mainly in the region of Bengal between 1943 to 1944. This killed 3 million to 4 million people. Since India’s independence, the country has never faced another major famine. The closest India has come to a famine was in 1966, in the region of Bihar. This poor food situation was however, alleviated before it reached the stages of a famine with aid from the United States when it allocated 900,000 tons of grain.

North Korea

Over the past 50 years, North Korea has tried to maintain a policy of self reliance or “Juche”. In prior decades, it had achieved moderate self sufficiency through massive industrialization of agriculture. However, its economic system has always had some reliance on substantial concessionary inputs of fossil fuels, primarily from the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. The fall of the Soviet Union and China’s move towards marketization, had a rippling effect which was also felt trough North Korea’s centrally controlled economy, as it was unable to continue to receive needed supplies on a full price basis. Despite North Korea’s agricultural efforts of improved irrigation and fertilizers, it has still be unable to “feed itself”. The policies of its centrally controlled economy along with a series of natural disasters since the mid 1990’s, has brought a cycle of “chronic food shortages” which North Korea has not been able to break free from.

Two years of unprecedented floods in 1995 and 1996 marked the beginning of the battle with famine and this persevered with severe droughts in 1997 and 2001. As such natural disasters destroyed much of the country’s farmland leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Hunger and malnutrition soon became rampant and continues to plague the people of North Korea today. Precise information on the severity of the death toll owing to the perseverance of famine has been difficult to obtain due to the “closed and secretive nature” of the North Korean regime. However, it has been estimated by relief agencies that in the mid 90’s alone, an approximate 2 million people died as a result of the food shortages. Foreign aid workers who where allowed rare access into North Korea in the late 1990’s recalled accounts of local people who relied on artificial food which they made from “ground up twigs, tree barks and leaves”. Such artificial mixtures are said to have lead to further health problems in the country as it contributes to many cases of internal bleeding and diarrhea.

North Korea has not yet resumed its food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aids from major donors such as China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. The political practices of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-II, potentially have the ability to affect the donations which Pyongyang may receive. In early 2007, South Korea considered delaying its rice aid as the North did not meet a key deadline to “shut down a nuclear reactor”. However, Seoul later said it would resume its supply of aid, despite Pyongyang’s failed deadline. Similar instances as this had also occurred in 2006 when Seoul “suspended shipments of rice and fertilizer” due to missile tests carried out by the North. Incidences involving Pyongyang’s practices and major donors may continue to occur in the future, however the North Korean people are the pawns caught in the middle and whose toll must be examined with the outcomes.

Vietnam

The most significant famine which occurred in Vietnam was the Vietnamese Famine of 1945. This was marked as an “unprecedented” famine in the nation’s history and lead to the deaths of 2 million people. The famine was brought on by a collaboration between the Japanese who had entered Vietnam in 1940 and its French colonialists. In an attempt to dominate Vietnam and combat the uprising Viet Minh revolutionaries, the French and Japanese controlled the food supply to the Vietnamese people. They forced farmers to destroy rice along with potatoes and bean crops and instead ordered the growth of peanuts and plants for Castor oil. This was grown as it was used to “produce gunpowder” and replaced the use of petroleum. The destruction of crops coupled with the spread of pests in the fields, forced the famine to reach as far as north Vietnam causing its peak in early 1945. The famine slowly began to decline thereafter as rural farmers actively joined forces with the Viet Minh, to rise against the nation’s occupying regimes and the devastations of the famine.

Vietnam has experienced famines on a comparatively smaller scale in more recent year in the mid 1980s and the 1990s. These famines were caused by flooding and natural disasters and the country has since recovered from these instances.

Famine in Europe

Western Europe was an arena for catastrophes in the fourteenth century. It began with the Great Famine of 1315 - 1322 and continued on to the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. Prior to the Great Famine of 1315 - 1322, Europe had faced many cases of food shortages in local regions which lead to the deaths of some local inhabitants. This was not uncommon and was viewed and almost expected to be part of the normalcy of a region. Local food shortages, however, were vastly different in nature and impact from one of the largest famines to hit Western Europe.

By the early fourteenth century the population of Europe had steadily risen and as such, so had the need for greater food production. The margin of error for food production grew slimmer each year and a plentiful harvest throughout Western Europe became a necessity in order to avoid large scale famines. Climatic changes in the beginning of the fourteenth century however, did not allow for optimal conditions in which crops could grow. Cooler weather became more prevalent with damper summers and earlier autumns. Shortfalls in harvests and crop failures occurred more often and soon, agricultural resources could provide enough food for its people only when the lands where nourished under the best of conditions.

The spring of 1315 saw the first stages of the Great Famine. Wet conditions made for massive crop failures and were known for rotting much of the seed grains before they could even germinate. Although many families began to deplete their food reserves and resorted to finding edible substitutes from forests, such as nuts, plants and bark, it has been reported that “relatively few” died in this initial year. The impact was more so of wide spread malnutrition.

The following spring and summer of 1316 changed this outcome. Malnourished families grew weaker and were largely unable to till the lands to produce greater harvest. The cold and wet weather pattern perused and food reserves become virtually nonexistent. Death tolls were estimated to be so vast that all classes of society, form peasants to noblemen, were affected. No one was safe from the Great Famine. It is said that draft animals which would help till the lands where slaughtered and unspoiled seed grains where eaten. The elderly often “volunteered” to starve themselves to death in order for any form of sustenance to go to the younger generations so that they might live to work the fields again. In the same token, infants and young children were abandoned. Although it has not been properly confirmed, there were wide spread rumors of cannibalism. It has been suggested that the Grimm’s Fairy Tale of Hansel and Gretel, reflects the abandoning of children and cannibalism which took place during the Great Famine of 1315-1322.

The famine perused for seven years until the summer of 1322 when the cold and damp weather pattern began to slow down and returned to conditions which were more favorable for agricultural growth. Recovery, however, was not immediate. There were problems with scarcity of seed grains and any animals and people which survived to this point, were extremely week to work effectively. It has been said that due to the ‘fewer mouths to feed’ at this time, recovery from the Great Famine was possible albeit at a slow pace. Although the official timeline for the Great Famine was from 1315 to 1322, the food supply only returned to its “normal” state in 1325 and the population in Western Europe began to increase again.

In the centuries which followed, Western Europe faced diseases and other events which lead to natural occurrences of small scale food scarcities and famines. As such occurrences were vastly small in comparison to the Great Famine of 1315-1322 and due to only small regions being affected at any one time, they were generally considered as part and parcel of Western Europe’s natural developmental process and not large scale disasters.

Ireland

The Irish Potato Famine began as a natural disaster but grew in severity due to social and political causes with the “actions and inactions” of the then Whig government, as it was headed by Lord John Russell. Divisions between Protestants and Catholics within British rule placed many restrictions on Irish Catholics. Under strictly enforced Penal Laws, Catholics, who were mostly Irish, were prevented from entering professions and from purchasing land. Along with it being illegal for Catholics to purchase land, it was also illegal for them to have an education, to speak or be taught in Gaelic, to hold office, vote, join the army, deal in trade, or practice their religion. Due to this form of discrimination, almost half the Irish population was forced to rent out small plots of land from “absentee British Protestant landlords”. The peasants began to grow potatoes on their small plots of land as they could grow triple the amount of potatoes on the land as grain.

In the minimal area of land which could be afforded by the peasants an acre growing potato crops was able to feed a family for a year. It was estimated that about half of Ireland’s population was dependent on potatoes for survival and the crop provided “approximately 60 per cent of the nation’s food needs”. The potato crop was unfortunately vulnerable to an air carried fungal disease the fungus Phytophthora infestans, otherwise known as "potato blight" which turned potatoes into an inedible “mushy mess” and for which there was no cure. This however, had not previously been a problem for the millions of Irish peasants whose daily diet was dependent upon this crop. The summer of 1845 soon changed that as Ireland was struck with “potato blight” and crops began to fail.

Depiction of victims of the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1849)

Six months into the potato crop failure, brought about large scale food shortages and by the following year, 1846, famine was a full grown epidemic throughout the land. Ironically in the initial year of the famine, although potato crops had failed, Ireland’s British lords were producing grain for export. The discrimination enforced by the Penal Laws, made Irish peasants too poor to purchase the grain which they farmed for their British lords. The British government initially refused to enforce any changes to grain exports despite famine conditions in the land, as it remained stout to its laissez-faire economic policies. Under this principle the government strongly believed that there should be “as little government interference with the economy as possible”, and therefore, firmly rejected any possibility of stopping Irish grain exports.

The initial lack of food conditions in Ireland strengthened largely into an artificially enforced famine by the ruling British government. The Whig government viewed the onset of the famine as a “sign from God” and as a lesson from which the Irish could “better themselves”. The famine was also viewed as an opportunity for Britain to bring Ireland under “total” English Law. Britain’s discrimination against Catholic Irish was so strong, that many believed the “Irish should be left alone to deal with the problems themselves”. As diseases brought on by the famine worsened in the late 1840’s, the British government began to implement changes to their laissez-faire economical policies and attempted to provide aid. By late 1847, soup kitchens and more grain began entering into Ireland in an attempt by the government to ease the lands devastating conditions. Unfortunately the implementations of these devises were very poorly distributed and initially did very little help.

It has been estimated that nearly one-eighth of Ireland’s population at that time died. From 1846 to 1851, about a million people had fallen to epidemic diseases and starvation. Also within a period of a decade, 1845-1855, it is estimated that close to two million people emigrated as a means to escape the devastations of Irish Potato Famine.

After the Irish Potato Famine, the last significant famine to strike Western Europe was towards the end of the Second World War in the Netherlands. This famine which developed due to a Nazi blockade in the western Netherlands began in October of 1944 and was known as the “Dutch Hunger Winter”. It is estimated about 40,000 people were exposed to the famine which ended with the liberation of the Netherlands in early May 1945.

Russia and USSR

File:Holodomor2.jpg

Child victim of the Holodomor famine

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) which also involved a significant part of the population of Russia. The last major famine in the USSR happened in 1947 due to the severe drought.

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]

Famine Today

Today, famine strikes African countries the hardest, but with ongoing wars, internal struggles, and economic instability, famine continues to be a worldwide problem with millions of individuals suffering. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network labeled Niger with emergency status in July of 2005, 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]

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 Lappé, 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.

Levels of food insecurity

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 in 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.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Asimov, Isaac, Asimov's New Guide to Science, pp. 152-153, Basic Books, Inc. : 1984.
• Bhatia, B.M. (1985) Famines in India: A study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India with Special Reference to Food Problem, Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
• Davis, Mike, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, London, Verso, 2002 (Excerpt online.)
• Dutt, Romesh C. Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India, first published 1900, 2005 edition by Adamant Media Corporation, Elibron Classics Series, ISBN 1-4021-5115-2.
• Dutt, Romesh C. The Economic History of India under early British Rule, first published 1902, 2001 edition by Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24493-5
• Genady Golubev and Nikolai Dronin, Geography of Droughts and Food Problems in Russia (1900-2000), Report of the International Project on Global Environmental Change and Its Threat to Food and Water Security in Russia (February, 2004).
• Greenough, Paul R., Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal. The Famine of 1943-1944, Oxford University Press 1982
• Mead, Margaret. “The Changing Significance of Food.” American Scientist. (March-April 1970). pp. 176-189.
• Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines : An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982
• Srivastava, H.C., The History of Indian Famines from 1858-1918, Sri Ram Mehra and Co., Agra, 1968.
• Sommerville, Keith. Why famine stalks Africa, BBC, 2001
• Woo-Cumings, Meredith, Political Ecology of Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons, ADB Institute Research Paper 31, January 2002.

External Links

• The Borgen Project Global campaign to bring political attention to famine and poverty.
• Famine Early Warning System monitors agricultural production and other warning signs worldwide
• United Nations World Food ProgrammeHunger relief against poverty and famine
• International Food Policy Research Institute Sustainable solutions for ending hunger
• In Depth: Africa's Food Crisis, BBC News

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