Famine facts for kids
Famine is a situation where most people don't have enough food to eat. Without food, the human body grows weaker and weaker until the person becomes very sick or dies. (See malnutrition.)
In poor countries with much subsistence farming such as in parts of Africa, famine can be common.
Well known famines
- 1816, the Year without a Summer was caused by Mount Tambora erupting. Tens of thousands died.
- The great Irish famine lasted from 1846 to 1849 in Ireland. It was caused by Phytophthora infestans which is a kind of water mould. It killed potatoes, one of the main crops of Ireland at the time.
- In the Holodomor, about 7 million of people starved to death in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933.
- The Great Leap Forward killed a few tens of millions of Chinese, in what was probably the biggest famine in history.
Famine prevention
There is a growing realization among aid groups that giving cash or cash vouchers instead of food is a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way to deliver help to the hungry, particularly in areas where food is available but unaffordable. The United Nations World Food Programme, the biggest non-governmental distributor of food, announced that it will begin distributing cash and vouchers instead of food in some areas, which Josette Sheeran, WFP's former executive director, described as a "revolution" in food aid. The aid agency Concern Worldwide is piloting a method through a mobile phone operator, Safaricom, which runs a money transfer program that allows cash to be sent from one part of the country to another.
However, for people in a drought living a long way from and with limited access to markets, delivering food may be the most appropriate way to help. Fred Cuny stated that "the chances of saving lives at the outset of a relief operation are greatly reduced when food is imported. By the time it arrives in the country and gets to people, many will have died." US Law, which requires buying food at home rather than where the hungry live, is inefficient because approximately half of what is spent goes for transport. Fred Cuny further pointed out "studies of every recent famine have shown that food was available in-country—though not always in the immediate food deficit area" and "even though by local standards the prices are too high for the poor to purchase it, it would usually be cheaper for a donor to buy the hoarded food at the inflated price than to import it from abroad."
Deficient micronutrients can be provided through fortifying foods. Fortifying foods such as peanut butter sachets (see Plumpy'Nut) have revolutionized emergency feeding in humanitarian emergencies because they can be eaten directly from the packet, do not require refrigeration or mixing with scarce clean water, can be stored for years and, vitally, can be absorbed by extremely ill children.
WHO and other sources recommend that malnourished children—and adults who also have diarrhea—drink rehydration solution, and continue to eat, in addition to antibiotics, and zinc supplements. There is a special oral rehydration solution called ReSoMal which has less sodium and more potassium than standard solution. However, if the diarrhea is severe, the standard solution is preferable as the person needs the extra sodium. Obviously, this is a judgment call best made by a physician, and using either solution is better than doing nothing. Zinc supplements often can help reduce the duration and severity of diarrhea, and Vitamin A can also be helpful. The World Health Organization underlines the importance of a person with diarrhea continuing to eat, with a 2005 publication for physicians stating: "Food should never be withheld and the child's usual foods should not be diluted. Breastfeeding should always be continued."
Ethiopia has been pioneering a program that has now become part of the World Bank's prescribed recipe for coping with a food crisis and had been seen by aid organizations as a model of how to best help hungry nations. Through the country's main food assistance program, the Productive Safety Net Program, Ethiopia has been giving rural residents who are chronically short of food, a chance to work for food or cash. Foreign aid organizations like the World Food Program were then able to buy food locally from surplus areas to distribute in areas with a shortage of food.
The Green Revolution was widely viewed as an answer to famine in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1950 and 1984, hybrid strains of high-yielding crops transformed agriculture around the globe and world grain production increased by 250%. Some criticize the process, stating that these new high-yielding crops require more chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can harm the environment. Although these high-yielding crops make it technically possible to feed more people, there are indications that regional food production has peaked in many world sectors, due to certain strategies associated with intensive agriculture such as groundwater overdrafting and overuse of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.
Images for kids
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Skibbereen, Ireland during the Great Famine, 1847 illustration by James Mahony for the Illustrated London News
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WFP's HungerMap LIVE monitors food security and predicts the status of crisis-hit areas where data is limited, World Food Programme, 2021
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Laure Souley holds her three-year-old daughter and an infant son at a MSF aide center during the 2005 famine, Maradi Niger
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Chinese officials engaged in famine relief, 19th-century engraving
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Illustration of starvation in northern Sweden, Swedish famine of 1867–1869
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Malnourished child during Brazil's 1877–78 Grande Seca (Great Drought).
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Lake Chad in a 2001 satellite image, with the actual lake in blue. The lake has shrunk by 95% since the 1960s.
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A child suffering extreme starvation in India, 1972
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Famines since 1850 by political regime
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Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
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See also
In Spanish: Hambruna para niños
