Famine

Famine is the extreme scarcity of food, to such a degree as to result in widespread starvation, swallowing entire segments of the impoverished masses. Famine results from the immediate consequences of the lack of sustenance on a population, whereas hunger is a persistent, chronic, long-term, and slowly debilitating problem associated with insufficient food. Hunger is more widespread and problematic than famine, yet it receives considerably less public attention.

The popular image of famine portrayed by media and pushed by political elites and agribusiness is a person of color, wide-eyed, with a bloated belly, surrounded by swarming flies. This image implies the innocence of such victims, whose misfortune is being born on a continent—usually Africa, Asia, or South America—where people are not educated enough to produce food for themselves, where population growth surpasses ecological limits, and where political conflicts and/or environmental disasters tax the available food supply. The prevailing view depicts famine as a problem of agricultural production and overpopulation. This picture perpetuates the assumption that famine cannot be redressed and will only worsen with global population growth.

The basis for the dominant paradigm of famine is the thinking of Thomas Malthus, who famously argued in the early 19th century that population growth and ecological limits in combination produced famine, as population growth exerts constant pressure on food supply. Without empirical evidence, Malthus contended that population increased geometrically (2, 4, 8, …), whereas agricultural production increased only arithmetically (1, 2, 3, …). Although history has proven Malthus wrong time and time again, his thinking resurfaced in the 1970s, wrapped in a green facade, and has haunted environmental academics, activists, and policymakers ever since. Malthusian thinking perpetuates the myth that famines are natural and inevitable, allowing food aid to be used as a political weapon throughout the global South.

Despite the persistence of Malthus's problematic assertion, there are, in fact, several opposing perspectives that explain famine. Central to the differing views are opinions as to the relative weights of two factors relating to the causes of and solutions to famine: agricultural production and population growth. On the question of agricultural production, productionist viewpoints situate agricultural expansion as necessary to reduce incidents of famine, and nonproductionists argue that social factors such as inequality in food access and distribution are to blame. Population growth is thought to be the underlying problem by neo-Malthusians, whereas adherents to non-Malthusian views argue that population pressures are not causal factors of famine. On the basis of these two dichotomies, four general typologies of famine emerge:

• 1.
  Agricultural Expansionist (neo-Malthusian; productionist)
• 2.
  Free-Marketer (non-Malthusian; productionist)
• 3.
  Ecological Malthusian (neo-Malthusian; nonproductionist)
• 4.
  Political Economy/Political Ecology (non-Malthusian; nonproductionist)

Agricultural Expansionists view population control coupled with production increases as the path to addressing famine. Free-Marketers argue that free market expansion will [Page 159]increase agricultural production and reduce the incidence of famine. Ecological Malthusians link population growth with ecological degradation in general as the cause of famine. Finally, Political Economy and Political Ecology approaches understand famine as being rooted in social systems and do not view population pressures and agricultural production levels as causal factors.

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