Famine

FAMINE REFERS TO AN extreme and protracted shortage of food, which results in widespread and persistent hunger, emaciation of the affected population, and a substantial increase in the death rates, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The key defining factor therefore relates to the problem of food scarcity. Thus to understand what constitutes a famine, to analyze its consequences, and to find ways in which its devastation can be minimized, or eliminated altogether, requires the researcher to probe into the question of food scarcity and all that bears upon this issue.

At the simplest level, food scarcity may be seen as the result of an imbalance between the forces of demand and supply within the market for food. Famine, seen as an imbalance between such forces, appears to have a straightforward solution: correct the imbal-ance—through policy interventions—and the problem is resolved. Unfortunately this simplistic approach does not always work, as the sources of most experiences of famine are only partly economic and substantially political.

Another approach by A.K. Ghose views famine not so much as shortages of food but in terms of a decline in food availability affecting a particular group or groups. This fine distinction makes sense only under some special conditions as the following quotation illustrates:

For Ghose the relevant distinction is between levels of food availability across a given population.

Less enlightened interpretations of the causes of famine attribute its principal origins to climatic and environmental changes. These arguments regard drought, unusually heavy rains—leading to flooding—and crop disease as the key forces behind food scarcity.