Lec 1, Pt2: Famous Famines Flashcards
How are we doing on food production?
Really well (acc to FAO)
- Population up 29%
- But primary crop production up 54%
- Meat production nearly doubled
-Milk production up ~50%
Daily supply of calories in the world has gone down or up?
Up!
- All part of the world have increased their supply of calories by 25% (except Oceania)
- Still African countries are an average barely above the recommended diet
Fruits and veggies have been more up more than __%
50%
Cost: increasing food production comes from what?
Better seeds, more inputs (fertilizers, herbicides), better techniques, more land areas (deforestation)
+ environmental and health consequences of increased production
Define famine
Highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale, when an area has at least:
- 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food
- 30% of kids suffering from acute malnutrition
- 2/10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition+disease
Irish Potato Famine: Situation
Ireland in 1840’s
- English colony, poor, agricultural country (66% dep. on farming)
- 8 million Irish in 1841
- Potatoes = huge part of Irish diet
Potato Blight
- A fungus that destroys crop underground
- Hit 1/2 crop of 1845, 99.9% in 1846-‘49
- 1847: partially successful potato harvest
Irish Potato Famine: Effects/Outcomes
Irish food markets and trade
- Ireland both imported and exported food during famine (maybe net exporter?)
- High food prices (esp. potatoes)
- Imports from US helped a bit
Irish households
- Lost major source of income (potato production) + cost of their major food source increase
- Many kicked off their land by landlords thx to British colonial policy that taxed landlords to fund poverty programs
- Could receive charity through colonial gov “work houses”, public works programs, and soup kitchens
Results of Irish Potato Famine
- Death (290k-1.2M)
- Migration: 1.3M, maybe 40% perished
What was known as “the death by hunger”?
Holodomor: Ukrainian Famine (1932-‘33)
Holodomor: Ukrainian Famine (1932-‘33)
- Soviet Union, which controlled Ukraine sought to collectivize agriculture and provide adequate/cheap food for urban areas
- Gov in charge of “procurement” of grain: seized food stocks
- Collectivization confiscated the means of production from individual farmers (ie
land + machinery) -> forced them to work for the collectives - Ukrainians resisted more than other parts of the USSR, some evidence USSR was
harsher on Ukrainians than other ppl/regions. - Because of USSR policy no free food markets existed
- Evidence that crop production was the same or higher in 1931, ‘32
- Between 6 – 8 million died out of a population of 34 million
Later life effects of famine on type 2 diabetes
- places with no famine had below average type 2 diabetes
- Please WITH famine had strong increasing odds ratios of type 2 diabetes
Shows: famine effects can last a lifetime
South Asian Famines: Bengal Famine 1943
Famine victims were almost from rural areas:
- Farmers were the last affect group
- Agricultural workers (landless) were the most affected group
Markets: sharp rise in price of rice in rural areas, some decline in rural wages
- 1.5-3M ppl died of starvation in 1943
China’s great leap forward famine: 1958-‘62
Farms: Farms were collectivized (starting in ‘52), but in ‘58 new techniques were brought in and implemented that did not work.
Workers/Farmers: Farmers were forced to divert some of their labor away their
fields to industrial production such as in small scale steel plants.
Weather: Bad weather in 1960 and ‘61, reduced agricultural yields. 15 - 20% of
agricultural land area hit by ”natural calamity”
Markets: Communist country, so government rather than market controlled food distribution. Food exports increased in ‘59 and ‘60
Outcome: More than 30 million people died, could be as high as 45 million deaths.
Describe China’s life expectancy during the great leap forward
life expectancy cut more than half
Sahel Famines: ‘73-‘74, ‘84-86
Drought across all the Sahel (a series of
countries across Africa from Senegal to
Somalia) in both famines
Crops failed, pastoral livestock herders
lost their livestock, prices went up.
Civil war in Ethiopia and Sudan
exacerbated the problem.
Up to 1 million people died in Ethiopia in
84/85 famine
USA for Africa raised $50million for
famine relief, many other relief efforts
Somalia Famine 2011 causations
Civil War, brought, loss of crops
South Sudan Famine 2017
Civil war, high food prices, high unemployment ailing economy (shut down oil export pipeline)
IPC Phase 1
None/Minimal
- households are able to meet essential food/non-food needs without doing anything extreme to access food/income
IPC Phase 2
Stressed
- households have minimally adequate food consumption
- but are unable to afford some essential non-food expenditures without engaging in exteme-ish methods
IPC Phase 3
Crisis
either:
1. Have food consumption haps that are reflected by high acute malnutrition
2. Are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping methods
IPC Phase 4
Emergency
- either:
1. Have large food consumption gaps // high acute malnutrition and excess mortality
2. Are able to mitigate large food consumption gaps only by employing emergency livelihood methods and asset liquidation
