marichiko |
04-10-2006 05:59 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by funkykule
Actual famines are far less prevalant now than say 30 years ago. I don't have statistics to hand, but most of what happens in 'the third word' is a result of conflict, poverty or food shortages due to the rural poor choosing to plant cash crops, like coffee, tobacco instead of maize, sorghum etc in order to get enough money for food.
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BZZZT! Wrong! Two beer penalty for you! The causes of famine are over population, natural disasters like drought, civil wars, poverty, and government incompetancy. From Wikipedia:
Modern famines have often occurred in nations that, as a whole, were not suffering a shortage of food. The largest famine ever (proportional to the affected population) was the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845 and occurred as food was being shipped from Ireland to England because the English could afford to pay higher prices. In a similar manner, the 1973 famine in Ethiopia was concentrated in the Wollo region, although food was being shipped out of Wollo to the capital city of Addis Ababa where it could command higher prices. In contrast, at the same time that the citizens of the dictatorships of Ethiopia and Sudan had massive famines in the late-1970s and early-1980s, the democracies of Botswana and Zimbabwe avoided them, despite having worse drops in national food production. This was possible through the simple step of creating short-term employment for the worst-affected groups, thus ensuring a minimal amount of income to buy food, for the duration of the localized food disruption and was taken under criticism from opposition political parties and intense media coverage.
Because herding and agriculture allow for greater population, both in numbers and in density, the failure of a harvest or the change in conditions, such as drought, can create a situation whereby large numbers of people live where the carrying capacity of the land has dropped radically. Famine is then associated primarily with subsistence agriculture, that is, where most farming is aimed at producing enough food energy to survive. The total absence of agriculture in an economically-strong area does not cause famine; Arizona and other wealthy regions import the vast majority of their food.
Disasters, whether natural or man-made, have been associated with conditions of famine ever since humankind has been keeping written records. The Torah describes how "seven lean years" consumed the seven fat years, and "plagues of locusts" could eat all of the available food stuffs. War, in particular, was associated with famine, particularly in those times and places where warfare included attacks on land, by burning fields, or on those who tilled the soil.
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