Famine
Famine refers to an acute food shortage. It is a
situation, which arises when the available food resources can no longer satisfy
the available population food requirements. Famine results into starvation,
malnutrition, under-nourishment and a drastic fall in the living standards of
the people. It further results in epidemics, diseases, death and or mass exodus
of people. Famine disasters have occurred from time to time since antiquity.
Despite repeated stated intentions by the world's leaders to end hunger and
famine, famine remains a chronic threat in much of Africa and Asia. In January
2006, more than eleven million people in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia
were in danger of famine and starvation.
There are countries that suffer from persistent famine
and those that suffer from periodical famine. Countries that suffer from
persistent famine include Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Mali, Senegal,
Chad, Niger and Mauritania. On the other hand, countries such as Uganda, Kenya,
Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, India, South and North Korea, Iran and Iraq suffer
from periodical famine.
A famine
is a widespread shortage of food that may apply to any faunal species, which
phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality.
Although most famines coincide with regional
shortages of food, famine in some human populations has 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, pestilence, and man-made causes such as
war or misguided economic policies. Bad harvests, overpopulation, and epidemic
diseases like the Black Death helped cause hundreds of famines in Europe during the Middle Ages, including 95 in the British Isles and 75 in
France.
During the 20th century, an estimated 70 million people
died from famines across the world, of whom an estimated 30 million died during
the famine of 1958–61 in China. The other most notable famines of the century included
the 1942–1945 disaster in Bengal, famines in China in 1928 and 1942, and a
sequence of famines in the Soviet Union, including the Holodomor, Stalin's famine inflicted on Ukraine in 1932–33. A few of the great famines of the late
20th century were: the Biafran famine in the 1960s, the disaster in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Ethiopian famine of 1983–85 and the North Korean famine of the 1990s.
Famine is typically induced by a human
population exceeding the regional carrying capacity to provide food resources.
An alternate view of famine is a failure of the poor to command sufficient
resources to acquire essential food (the "entitlement theory" of
Amartya Sen), analyses of famine that focused on the political-economic
processes, an understanding of the reasons for mortality in famines, an appreciation
of the extent to which famine-vulnerable communities have strategies for coping
with the threat of famine, and the role of warfare and terrorism 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 economic organization. Noting that many famines
occur under dictatorship, colonial rule, or during war,
Amartya Sen has posited that no functioning democracy has suffered a famine in modern times.
Child
victim of the Holodomor famine
Today, famine strikes Sub-Saharan African countries the hardest, but with
exhaustion of food resources, overdrafting of groundwater, wars, internal
struggles, and economic failure, famine continues to be a worldwide problem
with millions of individuals suffering. These famines cause widespread
malnutrition and impoverishment; The famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s had an
immense death toll, although Asian famines of the 20th century have also
produced extensive death tolls. Modern African famines are characterized 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 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 stated intentions by the
world's leaders to end hunger and famine, famine remains a chronic threat in
much of Africa and Asia. 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. In 2006, the most serious
humanitarian crisis in Africa is in Sudan's region Darfur.
Some believe that the Green Revolution was an
answer to famine in the 1970s and 1980s. The Green Revolution began in the 20th
century with hybrid strains of high-yielding crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as
the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain
production increased by 250%. Some criticize the process, stating that these
new high-yielding crops require more chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can harm the environment.
However, it was an option for developing nations suffering from famine. These
high-yielding crops make it technically possible to feed much of the world population. They can be developed to
provide enhanced 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. Furthermore, there are indications that
regional food production has peaked in many world sectors, due to certain
strategies associated with intensive agriculture such as groundwater
overdrafting and overuse of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.
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.
Noting that modern famines are sometimes the
outcome of misguided economic policies, political design to impoverish or
marginalize certain populations, or acts of war, political economists have
investigated the political conditions under which famine is prevented. 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.
The demographic impacts of famine are sharp.
Mortality is concentrated among children and the elderly. A consistent
demographic fact is that in all recorded famines, male mortality exceeds
female, even in those populations (such as northern India and Pakistan) where
there is a 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—lesser
affected 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.
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.
Individuals and groups in food stressful situations will attempt to cope by
rationing consumption, finding alternative means to supplement income, etc.
before taking desperate measures, such as selling off plots of agricultural land. When all means of self-support are
exhausted, the affected population begins to migrate in search of food or fall
victim to outright mass starvation. Famine may thus be viewed partially as a
social phenomenon, involving markets, the price of food, and social support structures. A
second lesson drawn was the increased use of rapid nutrition assessments, in
particular of children, to give a quantitative measure of the famine's
severity.
Since 2004, many of the most important
organizations in famine relief, such as the World Food Programme, Thom
Bauermann and the U.S. Agency for International Development chris Scott, 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.
Famine results from many factors that can be categorized
into two broad groups, physical factors and non physical factors.
Causes of famine
In biological terms, a population beyond its
regional carrying capacity causes famine. While the operative cause of famine
is an imbalance of population with respect to food supply, some famines are
caused by a combination of political, economic, and biological factors. Famines
can be exacerbated by poor governance or inadequate logistics for food
distribution. In some modern cases, it is political strife, poverty, and
violence that disrupts the agricultural and food distribution processes. Modern
famines have often occurred in nations that, as a whole, were not initially
suffering a shortage of food. One of the largest historical famines
(proportional to the affected population) was the Great Irish Famine,
1845-1849, 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 1958–61 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.
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 often associated 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, since such
regions produce sufficient economic goods for trade.
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 or salting fields, or on those who tilled the soil.
As observed by the economist Amartya Sen,
famine is sometimes a problem of food distribution and poverty. In certain 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. Most cases are not simply the result of the
excedence of the Earth's carrying capacity.
Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural
land is seriously degraded. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the
continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according
to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa. As of late
2007, increased farming for use in biofuels, along with world oil prices at nearly $100 a barrel,
has pushed up the price of grain used to feed poultry and dairy cows and other
cattle, causing higher prices of wheat (up 58%), soybean (up 32%), and maize
(up 11%) over the year. Food riots have recently taken place in many countries
across the world. An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa and into Asia
and is causing major concern.
There are a number of ongoing famines caused
by overpopulation, loss of arable land, war
or political intervention. Beginning in the 20th century, nitrogen fertilizers, new pesticides, desert farming, and other
agricultural technologies began to be used as weapons against famine. Between
1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased
by 250%. These agricultural technologies temporarily increased crop yields, but
there are signs as early as 1995 that not only are these technologies reaching
their peak of assistance, but they may now be contributing to the decline of
arable land (e.g. persistence of pesticides leading to soil contamination and
decline of area available for farming. Developed nations have shared these
technologies with developing nations with a famine problem, but there are
ethical limits to pushing such technologies on lesser developed countries. 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.
David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro,
senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition
(INRAN), place in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy
the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To
achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at
least one-third, and world population will have to be reduced by
two-thirds, says study.
The authors of this study believe that the
mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will
not become critical until 2050. The oncoming peaking of global oil production
(and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural
crisis much sooner than expected. Geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that
coming decades could see spiraling food
prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level such as never
experienced before.
Water deficits, which are already spurring
heavy grain imports in numerous smaller countries, may soon do the
same in larger countries, such as China or India. The water tables are falling in scores of countries
(including Northern China, the US, and India) due to widespread overpumping
using powerful diesel and electric pumps. Other countries affected include Pakistan, Iran,
and Mexico. This will eventually lead to water scarcity and
cutbacks in grain harvest. Even with the overpumping of its aquifers, China has
developed a grain deficit, contributing to the upward pressure on grain
prices. Most of the three billion people projected to be added worldwide by
mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages.
After China and India, there is a second tier of smaller countries with large
water deficits — Algeria, Egypt, Iran,
Mexico, and Pakistan. Four of these already import a large share of their
grain. Only Pakistan remains marginally self-sufficient. But with a population
expanding by 4 million a year, it will also soon turn to the world market for
grain.
According to a UN climate report, the Himalayan glaciers that are the principal dry-season water
sources of Asia's
biggest rivers - Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Yellow - could disappear by 2035 as
temperatures rise and human demand rises. Approximately 2.4 billion people live
in the drainage basin of the Himalayan rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar could experience floods followed by severe droughts in coming decades. In India alone, the Ganges provides water for drinking and
farming for more than 500 million people.
Climate
Climate leads to famine in several ways:-
Drought:
This refers to an abnormal shortage of water below the
usual requirements for food production. Drought kills off livestock and crops
hence causing food shortages and famine e.g. in the Sahelian countries of Mali,
Niger, Senegal, Mauritania, Chad and Burkina Faso, and South-West African
countries particularly Namibia and Angola.
Floods
These result from heavy torrential rains leading to the
destruction of crops and livestock. People living within the margins of rivers
Niger, Senegal and Volta have on several occasions had their fields flooded
with water resulting into no output. Flooding is also a common occurrence in
India when the monsoon winds lead to heavy torrential rainfall. The most recent
floods of the year 2007 across Africa resulted in large-scale food shortages
and famine as most farm fields were submerged.
Unreliable rainfall
Low rainfall and its unreliability are a major climatic
limitation to food production. This is particularly the case in Kenya where 75%
of the land surface is classified as arid and semi arid land. Many countries in
the Sahel region fall under this category. Unreliability in terms of date of a
set and amounts in a given season leads to late planting and crops failures
after planting hence food shortages and famine.
Soils
Agriculture requires fertile and easily worked soils for
both crops and pasture. Only few crops such as sisal and cassava can tolerate
infertile soils. In the Sahel region, soils are sandy and infertile. In Kenya
two thirds of the soils are shallow and stony unsuitable for crops cultivation.
. Areas with fertile soils such as Machakos and Nyanza areas of Kenya and
Kondoa in Tanzania have been degraded through poor farming methods, which
result in serious soil erosion." Therefore, the land supports less and
less crops and yet the population is rapidly increasing. Food shortage and
famine are the results.
Clearance of Forests
In most parts of the tropics such as Nigeria, Ghana and
Liberia, forests are the main source of, energy in form of wood fuel. This has
resulted into rapid exploitation of forests leading-to their:' depletion.
Clearing of forests leads to reduced rainfall and desertification. Rainfall
insufficiency results into less crop yields and ultimately famine.
Destruction of the ozone layer
The ozone is a layer of gas found in the stratosphere. It
protects or shields the earth's surface from direct and harmful ultra violet
radiation from the sun. Unfortunately this layer is reducing in thickness due
to the pollution of the atmosphere by industries, factories, car exhaust fumes
and aircrafts from countries such as USA, Japan, China and others. The
environmental impact of the reduction in the ozone layer is increased
evaporation, drought and desertification. All these seriously affect food
production and lead to food shortages.
Pests and diseases
Insect pests and diseases limit food production in
several ways. Swollen shoot disease in cocoa, cassava mosaic in cassava, rust
disease in rice and stalk bearer in maize are examples of" destructive
diseases to food in Africa. Pests such as locusts and armyworms destroy crops
in the field. Locusts are particularly common in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya
while armyworms are common in north eastern Uganda. Furthermore, tsetse flies
cause Nagana in livestock in Nigeria and Burkina Paso hence loss of livestock.
They therefore discourage settlement and crop cultivation.
Relief
Relief, which is the nature of the landscape, limits crop
production in several ways. High altitude areas limit crop production due to
both extreme low temperatures and thin soils. Steep slopes as in Rwanda and
Burundi limit agricultural mechanization and results in low crop yields.
Lowlands as in Senegal are frequently occupied by swamps. They therefore have
poorly drained soils, which make them suitable for crop production.
Non-physical factors causing
famine
Population growth
In many countries experiencing famine, the rate of
population growth is far higher than the rate of food production. Food
shortages and famine are the result e.g. in Nigeria and Sudan.
Political
In Africa, wars have had a very devastating effect on
growing of food crops and rearing of livestock hence famine. Prolonged wars as
in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Namibia, Liberia and
northern Uganda result into no crop cultivation as people are ever on the move
to escape the war. In Somalia, famine is a consequence of civil war which has
been going on for over 20 years which also resulted in food distribution
systems break down.
Nature of cultivation
Most African fanners cultivate small plots of land that
do not produce enough to meet the needs of their families e.g. in Mali,
Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eretria. The problem is compounded by the farmers'
limited access to land, finance and technology. Because small-scale farmers and
other rural Africans have so few food stocks and little income, a period of
drought can quickly trigger famine conditions. This is especially true for
rural women, who are among the poorest of the poor and who account for the bulk
of food production in Africa.
Government policies
In Zimbabwe, the government embarked on a controversial
program of land redistribution. About 1,500 white-owned commercial farms,
making up nearly half of Zimbabwe's total commercial farmland, were seized
without compensation and divided among landless blacks and blacks with only
small landholdings. This act greatly affected food production and as a result,
serious food shortages and famine. Furthermore, famine is sometimes used as a
tool of repressive governments as a means to eliminate opponents. In Zimbabwe
from the early 2000s, famine was as an intentional result of government policy.
Land tenure system
In Africa like in many other developing countries, the
forms of land ownership are many. Some of them discourage crop production in
the following ways. The communal land ownership system denies one exclusive
rights over the piece of land he/she uses. This not only results into
irresponsible use of land but also discourages any initiative to introduce the
use of' modern fanning techniques such as application of fertilizers and manure
which are imperative for a higher crop out put per unit area e.g. in the Sahel
belt. The inheritance system as in Rwanda and Burundi, has led to land fragmentation
as land is divided up amongst all the son's or the father's death. The size of
individual holdings is therefore small and increasingly diminishing in size.
This results into over use of land and soil deterioration and limits the
economic use of farm machinery hence diminishing food output.
Poor storage, facilities
In most developing countries, storage facilities are
largely inadequate. During bumper harvests, there is a lot of wastage of food
because most of it cannot be adequately stored. The destruction of crops stored
by pests is also a serious problem e.g. weevils affecting beans and maize e.g.
in Zambia, Sudan, and Ethiopia.
Poor marketing
Adequate marketing arrangements for most food crops in
the typical world are not yet fully developed. This involves transportation of
food crops from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. Therefore, famine can hit
a region when other parts of the same country have surplus production e.g. in
Sudan and Chad.
Emphasis on cash crops
Colonial agricultural policies gave undue prominence to
the production of export crops such as coffee in Ethiopia, cotton in Sudan, tea
in Malawi, rubber in Liberia and others at the expense of food crops. In
Liberia for example the .introduction of rubber growing shifted emphasis from
production of yams and other food crops resulting in low food production.
Nature of production
In Africa like in many other developing countries,
agricultural production is on a subsistence basis. The Azande in Congo, the
Chipanga methods in Eastern Zimbabwe, bush fallowing in central and southern
Tanzania are all examples of subsistence farming systems. Production is mainly
for home consumption and little if any is sold. This limits food production
resulting in food shortages and famine.
Rural-urban migration
In many .African countries towns are growing rapidly e.g.
Cairo, Lagos, Dar-es-salaam, Kinshasa and Yaoundé. This is a result of
migration of people from the rural areas to the urban areas. Migration is
mainly by the young able-bodied people to seek better paying jobs and
excitement in the towns. These leaves crop production to the old flock that is
less effective hence low Production.
Limited capital
The purchase of machinery fertilizers, improved seed
varieties, setting up irrigation schemes and other items requires the
availability of adequate capital or finance. Due to shortage of capital,
farming is done using elementary tools such as hoes, axes, pangs, as well as
use of local breeds of livestock and seed varieties all of which result in low
yields and food shortages for the growing population e.g. in Somalia, Nigeria,
Ethiopia and Kenya.
Limited research
Because of limited capital and skilled manpower many
developing countries are unable to conduct adequate research in order to
develop high yielding food verities. Thus, agriculture is dominated use of
nature verities, which are slow growing, prone to pests and diseases, and
yields low output hence food shortages e.g. in Somalia, Chad and southern
Sudan.
Level of education
Agriculture in the developing world is carried out mainly
by peasant farmers with low levels of education. This makes it difficult to
adopt modem fanning techniques such as crop rotation, irrigation, zero 'grazing
and mulching even with the assistance of extension workers.
Technology
In the developed countries of Europe and North America,
cloud ceding or rainmaking can easily eliminate water shortage. In Africa areas
prone to drought such as Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and others could apply
the same method. Unfortunately, such technology does not exist in Africa and
drought has serious effects on food production.
Solutions to the food crisis
Green revolution
The Green Revolution has been an answer to famine
problems in many countries. It involves the use of hybrid strains of
high-yielding crops which has boosted crop production e.g. rice production in
Senegal, Mali and Niger.
National food policy.
Countries have set up policies aimed at increasing the
domestic food production to meet the ever-rising demand caused by the rapid
population e.g. in Nigeria it's called Operation Feed the Nation and in Kenya
it's called Kenya's National Food Policy.
Research
Increased research in traditional food crops is being
conducted aimed at developing high yielding disease resistant crop livestock
varieties. For example, maize is an important staple food in Zambia, Kenya,
southern Sudan and Tanzania. Hybrid seed varieties have been developed suitable
for the varied ecological conditions. In addition to the above, increased research
on pests and diseases control is carried out. The International Center of
Insect Pests Physiology and Entomology (ICIPE), International Laboratory for
Research on Animal Disease (ILRAD) the Desert Locust Control Organization
(DLCO) are examples of the major institutions involved in research on pest and
disease control on the African continent.
Education
Improved farmer education and extension services have
been made by agricultural officers and their assistants, Farmers are being
advised on modern and improved methods of crops cultivation and livestock
rearing in Botswana and South Africa. In addition to the above, farmer's
training centers have been established in many countries.
Irrigation
Irrigation schemes have been established where rainfall
is low and unreliable, areas experiencing frequent drought, so as cultivation
of crops can go on all year round. In Nigeria the irrigated lands in Soko,
Gongola and Bornu states produce large quantities of rice and yams. In Kenya
they are numerous irrigation schemes such as Bura, Hola, Mwea-Tebere and Ahero
producing rice to improve food production.
Agricultural services
These has been establishment of centers providing farmers
easier access to sprays, improved seeds, ploughs, fertilizers, insecticides,
carts and other requirements. In Nigeria, such centers have been set up at
Gombe, Funtua and Gusow regions aiming at increasing production of maize,
cowpeas, groundnuts, sorghum and other crops.
Relief organizations
This is not a permanent solution to the food crisis;
however it can temporarily solve the problem of food shortage. Relief
organizations help to aid famine victims in the short run. The International
Committee of Red Cross, Oxfam, World Food Program and others have mobilized
relief efforts to famine victims in many countries of Africa such as Sudan,
Somalia, Ethiopia and others for years. Aid has also come from rich nations
such as the United States, Canada and European nations.
Food crops Vs cash crops
Today many African governments are realizing the need to
increase food production at the expense of production of cash crops. In Zambia
today it is estimated that 87% of the total crop production consists food crops
such as maize, millet, and cassava. In Malawi, cash crops do not form a large
part of cultivable land and the greater part of the farmer's land is used in
growing food crops such as maize, sorghum, millet, root crops and vegetables.
Storage facilities
Modem storage facilities have been set up for storing
foods especially grains to avoid wastage during bumper harvests so as to avail
food in times of scarcity e.g. in Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt.
Transport
There has been improvement in the transport network
especially the feeder roads in the rural areas such that production of food
crops and their marketing is made easy e.g. in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and
Senegal.
Political stability
Restoration' of political stability and campaign for
national unity is a precondition for sustained food production. Through United
Nations, African Union, Regional Groupings, USA and the European Union, and
others, political stability if returning to areas such as Liberia, Ivory Coast,
Southern Sudan, Chad and Zimbabwe. This has encouraged settled life and
increased food production..
Capital
Organizations such as AMREF, World Vision, USAID and
others have provided famine stricken areas with farming implements, improved
seed varieties, constructed bore halls and valley dams all of which solve the
problem of limited capital by the farmers e.g. in southern Sudan, Kenya and
Nigeria In addition, there are institutions offering credit to farmers like
co-operatives banks, commercial banks and micro-finance institutions which
benefit especially the small-scale farmers to increase food production.
Control of population
In over populated countries such as Nigeria and Senegal,
family planning methods are being adopted to control population growth so that
there is a balance between food production and size of the: population.
Land reform
This involves re-distribution of land to the landless so
as to increase food production. In Sudan, the provision of land to tenants on
irrigation schemes such as the Gezira has helped to increase food production.
In conclusion, to eliminate famine and reduce
malnutrition, attention needs to focus not only on food production but also on
food distribution consumption, and family planning. Many countries are
establishing nutrition surveillance systems designed to predict famines before
they occur through such efforts and early government action, future deaths due
to starvation may be prevented.
Historical famine, by region
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." In 1680s, famine
extended across the entire Sahel, and in 1738 half the population of Timbuktu died of famine.
Historians of African famine have documented
repeated famines in Ethiopia. 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 percent 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.
The great famine that afflicted Ethiopia from 1888 to 1892 cost it roughly
one-third of its population. 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. In Africa, if current trends of population growth and soil
degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its
population by 2025, according to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural
Resources in Africa.
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.
In October 1984,
television reports around the world carried footage of starving Ethiopians whose plight was centered around a feeding station
near the town of Korem. BBC
newsreader Michael Buerk gave moving commentary of the tragedy on 23 October 1984,
which he described as a "biblical famine". This prompted the Band Aid
single, which was organised by Bob Geldof and featured more than 20 other pop
stars. The Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia raised further funds for the cause. An estimated
900,000 people die within one year as a result of the famine, but the tens of
millions of pounds raised by Band Aid and Live Aid are widely believed to have
saved the lives of around 6,000,000 more Ethiopians who were in danger of
death.
More than 20 years on, famine and other forms
of poverty are still affecting Ethiopia, but all concerned have insisted that the problems
would have been far worse had it not been for Geldof and his fundraising
causes.
Chinese officials engaged in famine relief,
19th C. engraving
Chinese scholars had kept count of 1,828
rampages by the famine since 108 B.C. to 1911 in one province or another — an
average of close to one famine per year. From 1333 to 1337 a terrible famine
killed 6,000,000 Chinese. The four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 are
said to have killed not less than 45,000,000 people. The period from 1850 to
1873 saw, as a result of Taiping Rebellion, drought, and famine, the population
of China drop by over 60 million people. China's Qing Dynasty bureaucracy, which devoted
extensive attention to minimizing famines, is credited with averting a series
of famines following El
Niño-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 Great North China
Famine of 1877–78 , 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)
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, 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).
Owing to its almost entire dependence upon
the monsoon rains, India is more liable than any other country in the world to
crop failures, which upon occasion deepen into famine. There were 14 famines in
India between 11th and 17th century (Bhatia,
1985). For example, during the 1022-1033 Great famines in India entire
provinces were depopulated. Famine in Deccan killed at least 2 million people
in 1702-1704. B.M. Bhatia believes that the earlier famines were localised, and
it was only after 1860, during the British rule, that famine came to signify
general shortage of foodgrains in the country. There were approximately 25
major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in the south, and Bihar
and Bengal in the east during the latter half of the 19th century.
Romesh 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 — one-third of Bengal's population at the
time. The famines continued until independence in 1947, with the Bengal Famine
of 1943–44— even though there were no crop failures —killing 1.5 million to 3
million Bengalis 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.
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 1996–99. An estimated 600,000 died of starvation (other 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 no longer be delivered. (Woo-Cummings, 2002)
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 shortage in
the 1980s, which prompted many people to flee the country.
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 17th 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 17th 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 16th century. The economy and population had
grown steadily as subsistence populations tend to when there is an extended
period of relative peace (most of the time). 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 17th century. The price of grain, all over
Europe was high, as was the population. Various types of people were vulnerable
to the succession of bad harvests that occurred throughout the 1590s in
different regions. The increasing number of wage labourers in the countryside
were vulnerable because they had no food of their own, and their meager living
was not enough to purchase the expensive grain of a bad-crop year. Town
labourers were also at risk because their wages would be insufficient to cover
the cost of grain, and, to make matters worse, they often received less money
in bad-crop years since the disposable income of the wealthy was spent on
grain. Often, unemployment would be the result of the increase in grain prices,
leading to ever-increasing numbers of urban poor.
All areas of Europe were badly affected by
the famine in these periods, especially rural areas. The Netherlands was able
to escape most of the damaging effects of the famine, though the 1590s were
still difficult years there. 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. PDF (589 KiB)
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 Great Irish
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 Great Irish Famine, 1845-1849,
was in no small part the result of policies of the Whig government of the
United Kingdom under Lord Russell. Unlike in Britain, the land in Ireland was owned mostly by Anglican people of English descent, who did not identify
culturally or ethnically with their peasants. The landlords were known as the
Anglo-Irish. As the landowners felt no compunction to use their political clout
to aid their tenants, the British government's expedient response to the food
crisis in Ireland was to leave the matter solely to market forces to decide. A
strict free-market approach, aided by the British army guarding ports and food
depots from the starving crowds, ensured food exports continued as before, and
even increased during the famine period. The immediate effect was 1,000,000
dead and another 1,000,000 refugees fleeing to Britain and the United States. After the famine passed,
infertility caused by famine, diseases and immigration spurred by the
landlord-run economy being so thoroughly undermined, caused the population to
enter into a 100-year decline. It was not until the 1970's that the population
of Ireland, then at half of what it had been before the famine, began to rise
again. This period of Irish population decline after the famine was at a time
when the European population doubled and the English population
increased fourfold. This left the country severely underpopulated. The population
decline continued in parts of the country worst affected by the famine until
the 1990s - 150 years after the famine and the British government's laissez-faire
economic policy. Before the Hunger, Ireland's population was over half of England's. Today it is an eighth. The population of Ireland is
6 million but there are over 80 million more people of Irish descent outside of
Ireland. That is 20 more times the population of Ireland.
Others state it was not the free market that
caused the Irish famine, because at the time, Ireland did not have a free
market. Irish Catholic citizens were prohibited by law from owning land, from
leasing land, from voting, from holding political office, from living in a
corporate town or within five miles of a corporate town, from obtaining
education, from entering a profession, and from doing many other things that
are necessary in order to succeed and prosper in life.
Famine returned to the Netherlands during World War II in what was known as the Hongerwinter.
It was the last famine of Europe, in which approximately 30,000 people died of
starvation. Some other areas of Europe also experienced famine at the same
time.
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.
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.
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]
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 notorious being the Holodomor
in Ukraine (1932–1933). The last major famine in the USSR
happened in 1947 due to the severe drought.
Likely examination questions
1. Giving
specific examples, discuss the causes of famine in Africa.
2. “Just
as poor rainfall is not the single and direct cause of drought, drought is not
the single and direct cause of famine" (A. Wijkman and L. Timberlake).
3. To
what extent is the above statement a true reflection of the conditions in the
Sahel region?
4.
With reference to specific examples, examine
the extent to which e physical factors are responsible for the problem of
famine in Africa.
