Is the Era of Great Famines Over?

Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for showing the political nature of famines. He showed that famines in India were localized to certain districts with abundant food in nearby districts. Ethiopia's current experiment replicates his finding with positive government action.

Food for the starving can come from nearby districts or from abroad. The issue in most famines is one of distribution. Government has to ensure that the aid gets to those in need.

Weather phenomena, think of El Nino and global warming, will create food issues in many countries, including the US. Farm districts here are facing problems in getting water to farms. The broad swath that is farm country extending south from the Central Valley in California to Texas and then north to Iowa is already facing water shortages. These shortages imply that this country will sooner or later be a grain importer.

Too many people, too little food causes famine. We need less people.

'Is the Era of Great Famines Over?'

No. Rather, it may not yet have begun. While agreeing that political forces have often deliberately created famine, one of the reasons permitting the famine finally to be lifted, is the continued existence of fertile, sufficiently watered areas for crops still to be grown and harvested.

It's very likely that large areas within continents, presently great areas for growing crops, will become very dry indeed over coming decades, as the climate is forced ever father from the patterns to which we're accustomed. And in any case, temperatures will exceed those at which such crops grow to any extent. There's the near certainty of hundreds of millions of people, over a time of a few decades, having to relocate to - somewhere. There is no political solution to the desiccation of large regions. Just see the utter incompetence and panic with which Europe is failing to deal with a refugee flow far, far smaller than Europe's population. How do you think they (or we) will respond to locust-like infestations of people? Starvation will be the least of it.

I definitely agree that there is a political dimension to Ethiopia's famines, but the story is more complex than what the article says. Ethiopia is not moving toward increased transparency and democracy. Ethiopia is run by a centralized political party that suppresses all political opposition. Because the government is good at this (e.g. tightly managing the press, playing ethnic factions against one another, and making promises to the relatively uneducated majority rural population to keep them calm), they have been able to maintain peace and focus all their energy on infrastructure. And that's great - infrastructure is hugely important. If a revolution came to Ethiopia bringing real democracy, I suspect that Ethiopia would become more vulnerable to famine, simply because great social transformations and popular discontent are not conducive to infrastructure projects. Nonetheless, I have the feeling that the social bargain that the government is offering is not built to last. There is tremendous population pressure and environmental pressure and, over the long term, it will be difficult to keep up, whatever the government's good intentions.

No, the era of famines is not over! When the population on this planet reaches 10,12 or 15 billion by 2050 or 2075 or 2100 a threshold breaking point will be reached & there will be famine and pandemics on a global scale, & devastating probably nuclear wars that will kill billions over scarce resources. All because of human population growth driven by our leaders' infinite greed for more profits and power (they always want more customers, more workers to keep wages low & larger populations to intimidate neighboring nations) burns the candle at both ends. It simultaneously increases demand for resources, and what is seldom realized eventually decreases the supply via destroying farmland and productive ecosystems of all kinds via housing, industrial and infra structure development and poisoning what farmland and productive waters that are left with overwhelming amounts of pollution. Its just a matter of time before our population bubble bursts, we learn what the ultimate carrying capacity for humans on earth is. And this crash like the one in 2008 will not be foreseen by our economist priesthood who know nothing but how to tell their 1% patrons what they want to hear ... that infinite growth on a finite planet is possible because our egomaniac elites can imagine it, think they are Gods who can accomplish the impossible. Well as long as they can rig our society so they can use millions, billions of us inferior commoner mortals as cannon fodder to fix the disasters they create.

Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Prof. Sen on this very observation that famines are less devastating in functioning, relatively free societies. The reverse was also established that in spite of sufficient food production, people can die of starvation in non-free societies. The key factor in survival was not the food production but the freedom of affected people.
See: Prof. Amartya Sen, author of "Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981)" was awarded the Nobel in 1998.

Apropos the article titled,( ' Is the Era of Great Famines Over?' by Alex De Wall, posted on May 8th,'16), it makes us say,'Hearty Cheers' to the Government of Ethiopia for its well-preparedness in tackling the drought. The government's managing food supplies, medical care with prophylactic treatments for the marginalised ones, using up the money from the oil-import, making roads motorable, preserving the funds received from the West during war time, resurgence from the El Nino attack to name a few, as seen by the writer, are just a tip of an iceberg, so to say, it shows the rest of the countries across the globe as to how a country can emerge safely despite Nature's fury at its worst. The swan song of the article has clinically affirmed that the real culprit for a country's facing the drought or famine is not because of overpopulation but because of Politics.Hence, if a country is gifted with good politicians, it can manage any national disaster. Hats of to the writer for hitting hard on this undeniable fact!
E.S.Chandrasekaran, Chennai, India

I take the point that peace is necessary to shore up food security but I think it is highly possible that we are teetering on the verge of a far greater era of famine than the world has ever seen before. The reason: global climate volatility. In the past climate aberrations have tended to be more regional in nature. Food crops (like the imported wheat the author refers to) can't grow well when temperatures oscillate as violently as they are beginning to do in many parts of the world. Venezuela is a democracy and we see a humanitarian crisis beginning to unfold there that is only in its infancy. We need to be focusing more on resilience farming and developing the now radical notion that each household is capable of growing a proportion of its own food needs.

Nice piece but why a mention of Chinese railroads but no mention of American efforts to assist? Are there none or has the author revealed an otherwise hidden bias?

"How did Ethiopia go from being the world’s symbol of mass famines to fending off starvation? Thanks partly to some good fortune, but mostly to peace, greater transparency and prudent planning. Ethiopia’s success in averting another disaster is confirmation that famine is elective because, at its core, it is an artifact and a tool of political repression."

Are you kidding? You can be as peaceful, transparent and prudent as you want but without foreign aids: railroad, food, oil, you are not going to make food appear out of thin air.

Ethiopia has let its population exploded while living on foreign aid. Wait a few decade till Ethiopia's population doubled and climate change reduce global food surplus to nil and let's see if great famines make a comeback.

I wish these articles and topics were also discussed in the current Presidential election debates . Trump appears so distantt from realities such as this. Hunger and food insecurity is real in the US too. Climate change is real here too. Politics in one country affects all others too.

Sounds like good leadership in a place which sorely needed it for far too long.

Politics is the great source of people dying from lack of food, famine is caused by climate changes.

The tragedy of the half million people that died of starvation in Somalia because the US tactic to flush out the few thousand terrorists from this area was to prevent food from making it to the region. The byproduct of this tactic was to create an enormous amount of anger and hate towards the US government.

When I try to defend my government's actions to those who come from Somalia, innocent women who have the same memories of their childhoods there as I do of mine here, what do I say.

Is the author serious? A discussion of future famine with no mention of anthropocene-induced climate change, ocean acidification, and massive species extinction? The truly great global famines are just ahead, possibly in our children's or grandchildren's lives.

"So is the era of great famines finally over? Let’s just say it could be." While I am glad the author stopped short of a Francis "End of history" Fukayama conclusion, I still find this qualified conclusion too sanguine.

I am happy for the people of Ethiopia who have suffered less than they might have in the past, and hope conditions may continue to improve for them.

But what the author does not consider is that not only do wars exacerbate the consequences of drought and the damage of famine, but cause can also become effect: Droughts and famine can exacerbate and even ignite wars. Case in point: A severe drought in Syria caused a population of one million agriculturalists to flee to the cities, where they still could not find jobs. Social discontent led to protests, which were met by a violent response from the Syrian government, igniting the civil war. I don't blame the drought for the response of the government, but we can't depend on government doing the right thing.

Now Iran is facing an imminent water crisis that would likely mean 40% of the 77+ million Iranis would be forced to move. Where will they go? Who will take care of them? (Nuclear weapons will not be Iran's first priority. Solving a vast ecological crisis will consume their attention.)

Climate change is threatening to make most of the Middle East and North Africa uninhabitable in this century. Another era of great famines is likely just beginning.

This is a great article - informative and fact based. Not overheated rhetoric. Thank you.

This a wonderful article. We should have more positive discussions. In the world we are living longer, the birthrate is decreasing, renewable energy production is surging, electric cars are becoming practical and very few new coal plants are being built. But one would never learn this by reading the local press. It seams that bad news sells. Yet the good news is there. Thanks for sharing it.

I agree with Mr. de Waal up to a point. As long as there is adequate transportation infrastructure to supply food to populations in areas impacted by adverse environmental effects, and there are no ongoing internal or external conflicts, then we may not see the kinds of large famines during the last part of the 20th century.

But when he discounts overpopulation as a primary driver of famine, I need to point out we still live in world of limited resources. Technology may partially ameliorate those limitations, but the Malthusian Crunch ultimately applies.

Large growing populations deplete limited resources until there are inadequate resources. This invariably leads political instability. Burundi is a perfect example. Sons inherit land, but the more sons the smaller parcels. Conflict among close family members now supercedes ethnic conflagrations. Land & food shortages will ultimately lead to civil war and famine. Overpopulation ultimately leads to collapse.