From the beginning of time, their have been food crises in one form or another. Ancient books such as the Bible have records of various famines devastating portions of the world. And while it’s easy to attribute these crises to a single cause, such as war or drought, the causes are usually much deeper and much more complex. Nelson Mandela said, “Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice.”
In order for us to achieve the kind of justice envisioned by Mandela, it’s essential that we first understand the underlying causes of food crises. Only after we have understood can we then begin creating meaningful solutions.
With that in mind, here are 8 primary factors behind almost every global food crisis. While not all 8 of these will be present at a time, you will almost always find several of these at work.
Andrew Seal and Rob Bailey discuss the limitations of data-driven humanitarian efforts, and the lessons learned from the 2011 Somalia famine.
The UN announcement of famine in Somalia is both a wake-up call to the scale of this disaster, and a wake-up call to the solutions needed to limit death-from-hunger now and in the future. So, what is famine and how can we prevent it? Famine is the “triple failure” of (1) food production, (2) people’s ability to access food and, finally and most crucially (3) in the political response by governments and international donors.
Crop failure and poverty leave people vulnerable to starvation – but famine only occurs with political failure. In Somalia years of internal violence and conflict have been highly significant in creating the conditions for famine.
The purpose of this public health risk assessment is to provide health professionals in United Nations agencies, nongovernmental organizations, international and local organizations, donor agencies and local authorities, who are currently working with populations affected by the emergency in the Horn of Africa,with up-to-date technical guidance on the major public health threats faced by the populations affected by the drought and famine conditions in the sub-region.
The topic areas addressed have been selected on the basis of the burden of morbidity and mortality, as well as the potential for their increased risk in the affected area. Public health threats represent a significant challenge to those providing health-care services in this evolving situation. It is hoped that this risk assessment will facilitate the coordination of activities between all agencies working among the populations currently affected by the crisis
More than 70 million people died in famines during the 20th century. This paper compiles excess mortality estimates from over 30 major famines and assess the success of some parts of the world – China, the Soviet Union, and more recently India and Bangladesh – in apparently eradicating mass mortality food crises. This is contrastes with the experience of sub-Saharan Africa where famines precipitated by adverse synergies between natural triggers (drought) and political crisis (civil wars) have become endemic since the late 1960s.
The paper also examines the evolving discourse around famine causation during the century, and finds that despite the proliferation of demographic, economic and political theories, each embodies the reductionist perspective of disciplinary specialisation. The paper concludes by arguing that if famine is to be completely eradicated during the 21st century this requires not just technical (food production and distribution) capacity but substantially more political will,
