Famine

This article is about scarcity of food. For other uses, see Famine (disambiguation).

A woman, man, and child, all dead from starvation during the Russian famine of 1921–1922

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food[1][2] caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every inhabited continent in the world has experienced a period of famine throughout history. During the 19th and 20th century, Southeast and South Asia, as well as Eastern and Central Europe, suffered the greatest number of fatalities due to famine. Deaths caused by famine declined sharply beginning in the 1970s, with numbers falling further since 2000. Since 2010, Africa has been the most affected continent in the world by famine.

  1. ^ "Fighting famine". wfp.org. World Food Programme. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
  2. ^ Kelly, James (May 1992). "Scarcity and Poor Relief in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Subsistence Crisis of 1782–4". Irish Historical Studies. 28 (109): 38–62. doi:10.1017/S0021121400018575. JSTOR 30008004. S2CID 163962983.