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Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food,[1][2] caused by several possible factors, including war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every inhabited continent in the world has experienced a period of famine throughout history. During the 19th and 20th century, Southeast and South Asia, as well as Eastern and Central Europe, suffered the greatest number of fatalities. Deaths caused by famine declined sharply beginning in the 1970s, with numbers falling further since 2000. Since 2010, Africa has been the most affected continent in the world by famine.

This article is about scarcity of food. For other uses, see Famine (disambiguation).

At least 20% of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope; and

The prevalence of acute malnutrition in children exceeds 30%; and

The death rate exceeds two people per 10,000 people per day.

According to the United Nations World Food Programme, famine is declared when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food.[3] The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification criteria define Phase 5 famine of acute food insecurity as occurring when:[4][5]


The declaration of a famine carries no binding obligations on the UN or member states, but serves to focus global attention on the problem.[6]

Blix – Widespread food shortage leading to significant rise in regional death rates.

[162]

Brown and Eckholm – Sudden, sharp reduction in food supply resulting in widespread hunger.

[163]

Scrimshaw – Sudden collapse in level of food consumption of large numbers of people.

[164]

Ravallion – Unusually high mortality with unusually severe threat to food intake of some segments of a population.

[165]

Cuny – A set of conditions that occurs when large numbers of people in a region cannot obtain sufficient food, resulting in widespread, acute malnutrition.

[166]

Alfani, Guido; Ó Gráda, Cormac (2018). "The timing and causes of famines in Europe". . 1 (6): 283–288. Bibcode:2018NatSu...1..283A. doi:10.1038/s41893-018-0078-0. S2CID 134922211.

Nature Sustainability

Arnold, David. Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Basil Blackwell, 1988).

Ashton, Basil, et al. "Famine in China, 1958–61." in The Population of Modern China (Springer, Boston, MA, 1992) pp. 225–271.

Asimov, Isaac, Asimov's New Guide to Science, pp. 152–53, 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).

Blix, Gunnar; Svensk näringsforskning, Stiftelsen (1971), Famine: A symposium dealing with nutrition and relief operations in times of disaster, vol. 9, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell

Brown, Lester Russell; Eckholm, Erik P. (1974). . Praeger. ISBN 978-0-275-63640-1.

By Bread Alone

Campbell, David. "The iconography of famine." in Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012): 79–92 .

online

Chaudhari, B. B (1984). Desai, Meghnad; Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber; Rudra, Ashok (eds.). . Vol. 1. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05369-4. Retrieved 1 October 2010.

Agrarian power and agricultural productivity in South Asia

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (Oxford University Press, 1986).

Cuny, Frederick C; Hill, Richard B (1999), , West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, ISBN 978-1-56549-090-1

Famine, Conflict, and Response: a Basic Guide

Davis, Mike, , London, Verso, 2002

Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

De Waal, Alexander. Famine Crimes: Politics & the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (Indiana University Press, 1997).

De Waal, Alexander. Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan (2nd ed. 2005)

online

Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62 (2011)

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,  1-4021-5115-2.

ISBN

Dutt, Romesh C. The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule, first published 1902, 2001 edition by Routledge,  0-415-24493-5

ISBN

Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn, and Cormac O'gr. Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China (U of California Press, 2008).

Fegan, Melissa. Literature and the Irish Famine 1845–1919 (Clarendon Press, 2002).

Encyclopædia Britannica (2010). . Retrieved 1 October 2010.

"Food-availability decline"

Ganson, Nicholas, The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ( 0-230-61333-0)

ISBN

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).

Gráda, Cormac Ó. Famine: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Greenough, Paul R., Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal. The Famine of 1943–1944 (Oxford University Press, 1982).

Haggard, Stephan, and Marcus Noland. Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (Columbia University Press, 2007).

Harrison, G. Ainsworth. Famine, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Iliffe, John. "Famine in Zimbabwe, 1890–1960"]. (1987).

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/11667/Iliffe,%20Dr.%20John,%20Femine%20In%20Zimbabwe,%201890-1960%20(Henderson%20History%20Seminar%20Series,%20Paper%20No.%2070).pdf?sequence=1

Jordan, William Chester. The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century. (Princeton University Press, 1997).

Keen, David. The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan 1983–89 (James Currey, 2008).

Kinealy, Christine (1995). This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.  1-57098-034-9.

ISBN

LeBlanc, Steven, Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, St. Martin's Press (2003) argues that recurring famines have been the major cause of warfare since times. ISBN 0-312-31089-7

paleolithic

Lassa, Jonatan (3 July 2006). . The Jakarta Post. Archived from the original on 16 February 2009.

"Famine, drought, malnutrition: Defining and fighting hunger"

Li, Lillian M. Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s (Stanford UP), 2007  978-0-8047-5304-3.

ISBN

Lucas, Henry S. "The great European famine of 1315, 1316, and 1317." Speculum 5.4 (1930): 343–377.

Mallory, Walter H. China: Land of famine (1926) .

online

Marcus, David. "Famine crimes in international law." American Journal of International Law (2003): 245–281. Archived 15 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine

online

Massing, Michael (2003). . The New York Times. Retrieved 27 September 2010.

"Does Democracy Avert Famine?"

Mead, Margaret. "The Changing Significance of Food". American Scientist. (March–April 1970). pp. 176–89.

Meng, Xin, Nancy Qian, and Pierre Yared. "The institutional causes of China's great famine, 1959–1961". Review of Economic Studies 82.4 (2015): 1568–1611.

online

Ray, James Arthur; Sivertsen, Linda (2008). . Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-2264-9.

Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want

Mishra, Vimal; et al. (2019). "Drought and Famine in India, 1870–2016". . 46 (4): 2075–2083. Bibcode:2019GeoRL..46.2075M. doi:10.1029/2018GL081477. S2CID 133752333.

Geophysical Research Letters

Moon, William. . North Korean Review

"Origins of the Great North Korean Famine"

Newby, A.G. Finland's Great Famine, 1856-68 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Padmanabhan, S. Y. "The great Bengal famine." Annual Review of Phytopathology 11.1 (1973): 11–24 .

online

(1996), Famines and economics, World Bank, Policy Research Dept., Poverty and Human Resources Division, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.18.1618

Ravallion, Martin

Roseboom, Tessa, Susanne de Rooij, and Rebecca Painter. "The Dutch famine and its long-term consequences for adult health." Early human development 82.8 (2006): 485–491.

online

Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982 via Oxford Press

Sen, Amartya

(1987). Food Protection in the Americas. National Academy Press.

Scrimshaw, Nevin S.

Shipton, Parker (1990). "African Famines and Food Security: Anthropological Perspectives". Annual Review of Anthropology. 19: 353–94. :10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.002033.

doi

Smil, V. (1999). . BMJ. 319 (7225): 1619–1621. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1619. PMC 1127087. PMID 10600969.

"China's great famine: 40 years later"

Sommerville, Keith. , BBC, 2001

Why famine stalks Africa

Srivastava, H.C., The History of Indian Famines from 1858–1918, Sri Ram Mehra and Co., Agra, 1968.

Vaughan, Megan. The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in Twentieth-Century Malawi (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

Webb, Patrick. Famine. In Griffiths, M (ed.). Encyclopaedia of International Relations and Global Politics. London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 270–72.

Wemheuer, Felix. Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union (Yale University Press, 2014).

Woo-Cumings, Meredith, (PDF). 22 January 2015. (807 KB), ADB Institute Research Paper 31, January 2002.

"The Political Ecology of Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons"

Zhou, Xun, ed. The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962: A Documentary History (Yale University Press, 2012).

from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives

1980s Drought and Subsequent Food Crisis

And The Race Against Hunger

Morning Star Fishermen

Hunger relief against poverty and famine

United Nations World Food Programme

Sustainable solutions for ending hunger

International Food Policy Research Institute

Cohne, Josh (28 February 2012). . Technorati.

"Arable Land Shortage and the Case for Agriculture and Farmland Investing"

. BBC News. 21 September 2007.

"In Depth: Africa's Food Crisis"

(31 March 2006). "Overfarming African Land Is Worsening Hunger Crisis". The New York Times.

Dugger, Celia W.

"Food Security: A Review of Literature from Ethiopia to India" (Geopolicity)

Marcus, David (2003). . The American Journal of International Law.

"Famine Crimes in International Law"

(26 October 1998). The Real Causes of Famine". Time.

Sachs, Jeffrey