Hunger: Myth and Reality 

FAMINE (Lat. fames, hunger), extreme and general scarcity of food, causing distress and deaths from starvation among the population of a district or country. Famines have caused widespread suffering in all countries and ages. A list of the chief famines recorded by history is given farther on. The causes of famine are partly natural and partly artificial. Among the natural causes may be classed all failures of crops due to excess or defect of rainfall and other meteorological phenomena, or to the ravages of insects and vermin. Among the artificial cause~ may be classed war and economic errors in the production, transport and sale of food-stuffs. 
The natural causes of famine are still mainly outside our control, though science enables agriculturists to combat them more successfully, and the improvement in means of transport allows a rich harvest in one land to supplement the defective 4 crops in another. In tropical countries drought is the commonest cause of a failure in the harvest, and the hydraulic engineer comes to the rescue by devising systems of water-storage and irrigation. It is less easy to provide against the evils of excessive rainfall and of frost, hail and the like. The experience of the French in Algiers shows that it is possible to stamp out a plague of locusts, such as is the greatest danger to the farmer in many parts of Argentina. But the ease with which food can nowadays be transported from one part of the world to another minimizes the danger of famine from natural causes, as we can hardly conceive that the whole food-producing area of the world should be thus affected at once.

Myth 1 

Not Enough Food to Go Around 
BUT
Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. The problem is people are poor not their countries. Even most "hungry countries" are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

The artificial causes of famine have mostly ceased to be operative on any large scale. Chief among them is war, which may cause a shortage of food - supplies, either by its direct ravages or by depleting the supply of agricultural labor. But only local famines are likely to arise from this cause. Legislative interference with agricultural operations or with the distribution of food-supplies, currency restrictions and failure of transport, which have all caused famines in the past, are unlikely thus to operate again; nor is it probable that the modern speculators who attempt to make corners in wheat could produce the evil effects contemplated in the old statutes against forestallers and regrators. 
Local famines that occurred in the 20th century will probably be attributable to natural causes. It is impossible to regulate the rainfall of any district, or wholly to supply its failure by any system of water-storage. Irrigation is better able to bring fertility to a naturally arid district than to avert the failure of crops in one which is naturally fertile. The true palliative of famine is to be found in the improvement of methods of transport, which make it possible rapidly to convey food from one district to another. But the efficiency of this preventive stops short at the point of saving human life. It cannot prevent a rise in prices, with the consequent suffering among the poor. Still, every year makes it less likely that the world will see a renewal of the great famines of the past.  

Myth 2 

Nature's to Blame for Famine 
BUT
Human-made forces make people vulnerable to nature. Food is always available for those who can afford it. Millions are deprived of land by a powerful few. Natural events are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times.

Great Famines 

Amongst the great famines of history may be named the following: 
B.C. 436 Famine at Rome, when thousands of starving people threw themselves into the Tiber. 
42 A.D. Great famine in Egypt. 
650 A.D. Famine throughout India. 
879 A.D. Universal famine. 
941, 1022 A.D. Great famines in India, in which entire provinces and 1033 were depopulated and humans was driven to cannibalism. 
1005 A.D. Famine in England. 
1016 A.D. Famine throughout Europe.. 
1064 -I072 Seven years famine in Egypt. 
1148 -1159 Eleven years famine in India. 
1162 Universal famine. 
1344 - 1345 Great famine in India, when the Mogul emperor was unable to obtain the necessaries for his household. The famine continued for years and thousands upon thotisands of people perished of want. 
1396 - I407 The Durga Devi famine in India, lasting twelve years. 
1586 Famine in England which gave rise to the Poor Law system. 
1661 Famine in India, when not a drop of rain fell for two years. 
1769-1770 Great famine in Bengal, when a third of the population (10,000,000 persons) perished. 
1783 The Chalisa famine in India, which extended from the eastern edge of the Benares province to Lahore and Jammu. 
1790-1792 The Doji Bara, or skull famine, in India, so-called because the people died in such numbers that they could not be buried. According to tradition this was one of the severest famines ever known. It extended over the whole of Bombay into Hyderabad and affected the northern districts of Madras. Relief works were first opened during this famine in Madras. 
1838 Intense famine in North-West Provinces (United Provinces) of India; 800,000 perished. 
1846-1847 Famine in Ireland, due to the failure of the potato crop. Grants were made by parliament amounting to 10,000,000. 
1861 Famine in North-West India. 
1866 Famine in Bengal and Orissa; one million perished. 
1869 Intense famine in Rajputana; one million and a half perished. The government initiated the policy of saving life. 
1874 Famine in Bihar, India. Government relief ir excess of the needs of the people. 
1876 - 1878 Famine in Bombay,, Madras and Mysore; five millions perish. Relief insufficient. 
1877 -1878 Severe famine in north China. Nine and a ha~ millions said to have perished. 
1887 -1889 Famine in China. 
1891 -1892 Famine in Russia. 
1897 Famine in India. Government policy of saving life successful. Mansion House fund 550,000. 
1899-1901 Famine in India. One million people perished. 
Estimated loss to India 50,000,000. The government spent 10,000,000 on relief, and at one time there were 4,500,000 people on the relief works. 
1905 Famine in Russia. 

Myth 3 

Too Many People
BUT 
Population density does not explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food coexist with hunger. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people.

THE WORLD OF HUNGER

Famine has struck parts of Africa several times during the 20th century. While graphic media coverage has helped to raise international awareness of African famines since the 1970s, it has done less well at explaining why famines persist, how they occur, and how they differ from the equally (if not more) serious problem of chronic hunger. An adequate discussion of both problems must begin by addressing common misconceptions. Further, one must consider the broader political-economic and ecological reasons why so many African peoples are still vulnerable to deprivation, despite the numerous "coping strategies" they have long employed in order to survive in harsh and unpredictable environments. 

HUNGER

According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the average African consumes 2300 kcal/day, significantly less than the global average of 2700 kcal/day. Recent FAO figures estimate that 316 million Africans, or approximately 35 percent of the continent's total population, is chronically undernourished. Although hunger in Africa is hardly a new phenomenon, it now occurs in a world that has more than enough food to feed all its citizens. Moreover, while Africa's population is growing rapidly, it still has ample fertile land for growing food. Hunger, therefore, reflects not absolute food scarcity but rather people's lack of access to resources-whether at the individual, household, community, or national level-that are needed to produce or purchase adequate food supplies. 
The reasons people cannot obtain enough food are, of course, rooted in several different historical patterns of inequality. These patterns include the inequalities between Africa and its former colonizers or contemporary financiers, and between Africa's rich and poor. It also includes inequality between members of the same households, where food and the resources needed to obtain it (such as land and income) are often unevenly distributed between men and women, old and young. Whatever the reasons for food deprivation, when the result is malnutrition (defined as a deficiency of protein or vitamins, as opposed to under nutrition, referring simply to caloric lack) it can do lasting damage, increasing susceptibility to diseases such as malaria, rickets, anemia, pellagra, and perhaps acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Malnourished children suffer stunted growth and, often, learning problems. Malnourished adults have less energy to work. Over the long term, inadequate nourishment can cast communities into a vicious cycle of sickness, underproduction, and poverty. 

FAMINE

Famine is commonly defined as "acute starvation associated with a sharp increase in mortality." This seemingly straightforward definition, however, avoids the much more complicated question of why people reach the point of starvation. Contrary to popular media coverage of the issue, famine in Africa is not an abrupt event, nor an immediate, inevitable outcome of drought or other climatic misfortunes. Rather, research on the history of famine shows that several factors typically contribute to a society's or region's vulnerability to starvation, and that some of the causes of famine have changed significantly over the past century. 
As with hunger, a few basic facts about famine may be laid down. First, it is mostly children who die, followed by men; women's greater biological stamina makes them most likely to survive prolonged food deprivation. Second, the primary cause of death is not starvation itself, but diseases such as diarrheal infection and malaria. Third, famine not only increases mortality rates but also decreases fertility-and thus birthrates. Fourth, famine is typically rural, because for Africa's leaders (precolonial, colonial, and independent) food security in politically influential cities has almost always taken priority over rural areas. Fifth, the reported mortality rates from contemporary African famines are notoriously inaccurate, due partly to the difficulties of collecting such information, but also to international agencies' tendency to exaggerate figures in order to emphasize need for donor support. 
A final point is that famine typically strikes only after people have exhausted a range of strategies intended to compensate for unpredictable climatic, economic, or political downturns. It is the nature and effectiveness of these "coping strategies" that have been most transformed by the environmental, demographic, and political-economic changes of the past century. . 
For example, rural communities in arid and semiarid regions have long cultivated drought-resistant crops such as millet, sorghum, and cassava, in an attempt to produce enough surplus to last several months of dry weather. Although this remains a desirable strategy for many rural dwellers, environmental degradation in some areas has reduced yields. Of greater impact has been the need to produce cash crops such as cotton, a change that leads farmers to depend more and more on markets for basic food supplies. When drought leads to crop failure, farmers may have little or no money to buy food-just at the moment that grain prices are skyrocketing. Under such conditions rural dwellers might seek income elsewhere: through wage labor, for example, or the sale of household assets such as family heirlooms, furniture, or livestock. Such strategies are unlikely to work, however, in severely impoverished regions; selling assets can also increase vulnerability to future famine, if it leaves a household without draft animals or transport. 
Cultivating far-ranging social relations is also a time-honored "coping strategy." When famine threatens, rural dwellers often ask their urban relatives for money, food, employment, or temporary foster care of children. Entire families may also migrate, either to cities, neighboring countries, or, if necessary, relief camps. Abandoning home and field, however, tends to be a last-ditch strategy; by the time people migrate they may have already severely cut back on their daily food intake. 
Africa's nomadic pastoralists have been among the hardest hit by 20th-century famines. Historically, they have survived in austere environments by migrating seasonally between grazing lands and developing commercial and patronage relationships with farming communities. In the past several decades, however, new obstacles, such as national borders, fenced-off land, and expanding agricultural settlements, have increasingly restricted seasonal movements. In turn, this has provoked conflicts between nomads and surrounding communities, as well as between nomads and the national governments that control food aid. Since the 1960s, declining rainfall in arid regions, such as the Sahel, has also restricted nomads' migratory range. 
As the experience of many nomads indicates, the descent into famine depends a great deal on politics. During the colonial period, improved infrastructures and agricultural technologies should have improved food security, but colonial governments' high taxes, crop requisitions, forced-labor policies, and overall lack of accountability all increased vulnerability to famine in many regions. In the French colony of Haute-Volta (now Burkina Faso), for example, rural households that were forced to grow cotton suffered severe famine after rains failed and world commodity markets collapsed in 1930. 
That many independent African governments have proven as unaccountable as their predecessors explains, in part, why famine still occurs in the late 20th century; war is another major reason. Some famines have followed governments' failure to respond to warning signs-such as the Zimbabwean famine during the drought of 1991-1992, for example-while others have resulted from draconian government efforts to control and extract revenue from rural populations. The Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s, for example, was caused not only by drought but also by burdensome government crop requisitions and massive forced relocation schemes in the country's northern regions. In such instances, the lack of basic democratic institutions made it possible for famine's warning signs to go unheeded, both within and beyond the country in question. As the economist Amartya Sen has noted, ". . . in the terrible history of famines in the world, it is hard to find a case in which famine has occurred in a country with a free press and an active opposition within a democratic system." 
Some of the worst contemporary African famines have resulted from wartime sieges. During the 1967-1970 Nigerian civil war, the federal government of Nigeria blocked all food shipments to Biafra, leading to widespread starvation. In 1993, siege brought famine to parts of war-torn Angola. And in Sudan's long-running civil war, the northern-based government has used its control over food shipments to weaken insurgency groups in the south. 
Despite their seemingly apolitical humanitarian appeal, international food aid agencies invariably complicate the political picture. Sometimes food relief lets negligent governments off the hook; sometimes it even sustains repressive regimes. Ethiopia again offers a prime example. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the military regime of Haile Mariam Mengistu received huge quantities of food aid to fight a famine it had helped create. Yet 90 percent of international aid supplied Mengistu's followers, while only 10 percent reached equally famine-stricken rebels. The famine thereby strengthened Mengistu's grip on the country. 
One the other hand, some countries that experienced dire famine as recently as the mid-1980s have made substantive gains in food security, despite the chronic threat of drought. Burkina Faso is one example; Eritrea is another. In both cases, concrete measures such as soil and water conservation programs on the village level have helped increase agricultural productivity in drought-prone areas, though they have not ended dependence on imported food aid. But past famines have also made food security a potent political issue, one that these countries' leaders cannot easily ignore. Success in combating hunger and famine in Africa will ultimately depend partly on technical advances, partly on sustained economic growth, but also on the recognition, both in Africa and abroad, that food security is a basic right. 

- Eric Bennett 

Myth 4 

The Environment vs. More Food?
BUT 
There is no tradeoff between environment and food production. Efforts to feed the hungry do not cause environmental crisis. Large corporations are responsible for deforestation and profit from developed-country consumer demand for tropical hardwoods and exotic, out-of-season food items. Most pesticides in the Third World are applied to export crops for blemish-free cosmetic appearance, with no improvement in nutritional value. Overcoming food crisis through virtually pesticide-free agriculture is possible. 

Myth 5 

The Green Revolution is the Answer
BUT 
Despite more grain harvest Green Revolution focuses on production only, with no change in the system of economic power. That's why in the biggest Green Revolution successes - India, Mexico, and the Philippines - hunger continues and long-term productive capacity of the soil is degraded. Prospects of a 'New Green Revolution' based on biotechnology, threatens to further accentuate inequality.

The 1943 Bengal and 1974 Bangladesh Famines

Severe weather events followed by the Japanese occupation of Burma, put an end to rice imports led to a severe shortage of food and famine in 1943 Bengal. Consequence of massive flooding in 1974 was famine in Bangladesh. But Amartya Sen argues that neither of these events actually caused a shortage of rice in the affected areas, rather the Bengal famine in British-ruled India was a "boom famine, related to inflationary pressure initiated by public expenditure expansion". 
Historian Indivar Kamtekar in his book "State and Class in India, 1939-45" analyses the war effort and famine not through the lens of imperialism or nationalism but of class. He shows that the Indian upper class, which led the independence movement benefited enormously from the war and famine. In Britain, the upper classes sacrificed for the war effort and there was social leveling. Wars are typically financed by high taxes. In Britain, an Excess Profits Tax with a peak rate of 100% curbed business profits. Universal rationing curbed the consumption of the rich while ensuring supplies to the poor. The war effort ensured full employment and improved nutrition to the working class. Not so in India. The war increased public spending threefold, and the British were unwilling to extract large sums from the rich. London feared that draconian taxes would be resisted, accelerating national freedom movement and paralyzing British war effort. Attempts to induce subscriptions to government loans failed. So massive deficit financing increased money supply by 650% during the war. Massive inflation was the inevitable outcome. The food price index (1937=100) shot up to 311 by 1949 in India, against 193 in the US and only 108 in Britain. The data reflect the rationed price of food in India: the black market price was even higher. 
Now, inflation and rising agricultural prices benefited all landowners. Even small ones got out of debt and bought fresh land. Many new salaried jobs were created by the war, and the problem of the educated unemployed disappeared. Above all, the business class flourished. The war required unprecedented quantities of supply. Lack of shipping constrained competition from imports. Business fortunes were made. Tax evasion was widespread. Indeed, some businessmen defended tax evasion as "patriotic" non-cooperation with the British! But the very scarcity that helped the propertied classes hit casual laborers, pensioners and others on a fixed income. The real wages of factory workers declined 30% between 1939 and 1943. By contrast, British real wages rose 49%, a leveling up. The rural landless in India were the worst hit. They had neither access to the new urban jobs or rationed urban supplies. The Bengal Famine occurred against this backdrop. Kamtekar says, "In a situation where franchise was based on property and education, they (the rural poor) were not on the provincial voters' lists. Although many died on the streets of Calcutta, none actually belonged to the city. City dwellers were safe, covered by various food schemes: it was the rural poor who came to the city to die. For all their misery, they remained marginal to the political scene. The dead were not articulate actors in the theatres of modern politics. The Great Calcutta Killing of 1946, when 5000 people were slaughtered, threatened the Bengali elite, and a furor followed. The Great Bengal Famine was a colossal human tragedy, but, cynically, no cause for political panic. Those who died could not even be counted properly, because they counted for so little." 
Later, India could not extract resources from the dominant classes. According to the Direct Taxes Enquiry Committee of 1958-59, not a single Indian was convicted of tax evasion in the decade after Independence. The situation has not improved in the subcontinent as shows data of the 1974 famine in post-independence Bangladesh.
While the famine in Bangladesh was not so clearly delineated by urban and rural, the laborers and small farmers were also the worst off. One of the main differences between the Bengal and Bangladesh famines was the role of the government. In Bengal, the government's actions and inactions were responsible for deepening the crisis. The desire to keep Calcutta, and therefore the government, stable prompted the subsidy of rice in the cities, furthering the crisis in the country. The ban on importation of grain from other provinces cut off a supply of food. That was an effect of international politics. The Bangladesh government was able to provide some food to those in desperate circumstances. But a lack of sufficient grain imports left them unable to expand the program to meet the need. That was also based on international politics. The US government refused to sell grain until Bangladesh stopped exporting to Cuba, thus cutting off essential food supply while the famine was worsening.  

In Bengal, agricultural laborers were hit first and most steeply. In Bangladesh many of those asking for relief were farmers. Both Bengal and Bangladesh underwent famines when there was sufficient food and when the markets were functioning. The Bengal famine was in many ways based on supply and demand factors, and was also a product of excessive government controls. The ban on grain importation from other provinces was a hindrance on the free market. In Bangladesh the market was functioning freely, except the US pressure exerted on the government. That pressure, technically a market force, in some ways went beyond the bounds of functioning markets.

- SWAMINATHAN S. ANKLESARIA AIYAR

Myth 6 

We Need Large Farms 
BUT 
Large landowners control best lands but are the most inefficient producers. Small farmers work hard and achieve 4 to 5 times greater output. But without secure tenure they have no incentive to invest in land improvements for future food production. Land reform and redistribution is needed. It favored production in Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. A World Bank study of northeast Brazil estimated 80% rise in outputs if farmland is redistributed into smaller holdings.. 

"Austenizing" of British Atrocities in India

I have published a book -- "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial Rapacity, Holocaust Denial and the Crisis in Biological Sustainability" -- that deals with the two century holocaust of human-made famine in British India and its effective deletion from history. It deals with this "forgotten holocaust" that commenced with the Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10 million victims) and concluded with the World War II human-made Bengal Famine (4 million victims) and took tens of millions of lives in between. 
Such deletion of unpleasant realities from history is described in my book as "Austenizing" after Jane Austen, whose elegant novels were utterly devoid of the ugly social realities of her time. The continuing Austenizing of British Indian history is a holocaust-denying outrage that ultimately threatens humanity by ignoring the massive human-made famine disasters of the British Raj and hence the underlying causes of racism, greed and moral unresponsiveness.

Repetition of immense crimes against humanity such as the World War II Holocaust is made much less likely when the responsible society acknowledges the crime, apologizes, makes amends and accepts the injunction: "Never again." However, when it comes to the horrendous succession of massive, human-made famines in British India, no apology nor amends have been made. While British Prime Minister Tony Blair has apologized for the mid-19th century Irish famine that killed over a million people, he has not even commented on the mid-20th century human-made famine in British-ruled Bengal that took four million lives. (He is aware of this, having acknowledged receipt of a copy of my book).
In the World War II Bengal Famine, when the price of rice rose above the ability of the landless rural poor to pay and in the absence of a humane colonial government, millions simply starved to death or died of starvation-related causes. While there was plenty of food potentially available, the price of rice rose as a result of a number of factors including the following: cessation of imports from Japanese-occupied Burma; a massive war-time decline in requisite grain imports into India; a deliberate strategic slashing of Indian Ocean shipping by Churchill; British seizure of rice stocks in certain sensitive areas of Bengal; the seizure and destruction of boats critically required for food acquisition and distribution; the failure to actually declare a famine under the colonial Famine Code and the "divide and rule" policy of giving the various Indian provinces control over their own food reserves. "Market forces" determined that industrial Calcutta, cashed up as a result of the wartime boom, was able to pay for rice and sucked food out of a starving, food-producing countryside.
The 1943-1944 Bengal Famine was accompanied by a vast multitude of other horrors. The world is rightly indignant about the large-scale, wartime "comfort women" abuses of the Japanese Army. However, it is not aware of the civilian and military sexual abuse of starving Bengali women and girls that was conducted on such a massive scale that it is reflected in demographic survival statistics. Ultimately millions suffered and died because their colonial British rulers did not care for them. Their ultimate ruler, wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, had a confessed hatred for Indians, confiding to the Secretary of State for India in 1942 that "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."Not surprisingly, the Bengal Famine, that was responsible for 90% of total World War II British Empire military and civilian casualties, is not mentioned in Churchill's 6-volume "History of the Second World War." Churchill astonishingly asserts in his book: "No great portion of the world's population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the people of Hindustan. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small Island." 
My father was a refugee to Australia from Nazi Europe in 1939 and I am deeply conscious of the Holocaust that wiped our extensive and gifted family from the face of Europe. I always had a deep interest in history and one can readily imagine my consternation on learning of the Bengal famine of 1943-1944 and the massive loss of life involved through the film Distant Thunder made by the pre-eminent filmmaker Satyajit Ray. My consternation turned to indignation when I turned to my large personal library to find that an event of a similar magnitude to the Jewish Holocaust and occurring at the same time was comprehensively absent, except for a brief, 3-word mention in a German historical encyclopedia. 
The world currently has a population of about six billion, of whom about two billion suffer food scarcity and nearly one billion suffer chronic malnourishment. About twenty million die prematurely each year from starvation-related causes. Conservative, status quo estimates would predict thirty million such deaths per year by 2050. If by 2050 the Third World returns from the current annual mortality of about 10 per 1000 to the 35 per 1000 obtaining in British India in 1947, then we will see an "excess mortality" of a staggering 200 million people per year. This is nevertheless avoidable provided there is a global moral responsiveness in our economically globalized world. That responsiveness is only possible if past, present and likely future human-made famine holocausts are unavoidably, remorselessly and continually presented to global public perception. We must resurrect the "forgotten holocausts" of colonial India and resolve: "Never again."

- Gideon Polya

The Irish Famine of 1846-50 took as many as one million lives from hunger and disease, and changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland in profound ways. A half million were evicted from their homes during the potato blight, and a million and a half emigrated to America, Britain and Australia, often on-board rotting, overcrowded "coffin ships", thus shaping the histories of the United States and Britain as well. Interpretations of the Famine vary drastically according to a source's religion, ethnicity and other factors.
It began with a blight of the potato crop that left acre upon acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. As harvests across Europe failed, the price of food soared. Subsistence-level Irish farmers found their food stores rotting in their cellars, the crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and Protestant landlords destroyed. Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperate to provide for their congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in order to feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried only in the clothes they wore when they died. 

Landlords evicted hundreds of thousands of peasants, who then crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Other landlords paid for their tenants to emigrate, sending hundreds of thousands of Irish to America and other English-speaking countries. But even emigration was no panacea -- shipowners often crowded hundreds of desperate Irish onto rickety vessels labeled "coffin ships." In many cases, these ships reached port only after losing a third of their passengers to disease, hunger and other causes. While Britain provided much relief for Ireland's starving populace, many Irish criticized Britain's delayed response -- and further blamed centuries of British political oppression on the underlying causes of the famine. 
The combined forces of famine, disease and emigration depopulated the island; Ireland's population dropped from 8 million before the Famine to 5 million years after. If Irish nationalism was dormant for the first half of the nineteenth-century, the Famine convinced Irish citizens and Irish-Americans of the urgent need for political change. The Famine also changed centuries-old agricultural practices, hastening the end of the division of family estates into tiny lots capable of sustaining life only with a potato crop. 

Myth 7 

The Free Market Can End Hunger
BUT 
Such a dogmatic "market-is-good, government-is-bad" 
formula can never address the causes of hunger. Market and government are combined in all economies. Market's efficiency in distribution is effective only when purchasing power is there. Empowering the consumers is what marketers should look for, not product promotion. Government should tackle monopolization; promote genuine tax, credit and access. Privatization and deregulation per se will not help combat hunger. 

LAISSEZ-FAIRE

The dominant economic theory laissez-faire (meaning: 'let be') in mid-19th century held that it was not a government's job to provide aid for its citizens, or to interfere with the free market of goods or trade. Despite laissez-faire, the initial response to the Famine under British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, was "prompt, efficient and interventionist." Food prices in Ireland were beginning to rise, and potato prices had doubled by December, 1845. Meanwhile, the Irish grain crop was being exported to Britain. Public and prominent citizens called for stopping the exports and importing grain. This would have meant repealing the Corn Laws, to which there was great opposition in Britain. "The Corn Laws laid down that large tax had to be paid on any foreign crops brought into Britain.

This kept grain prices high, and the British traders would lose profits if the laws were repealed". Since the Act of Union made Ireland legally a part of the United Kingdom, its corn crop could be moved to England without incurring the tax. However, corn crops brought into Ireland to relieve the famine could be taxed.
Prime Minister Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. This split the Tory Party and Peel was forced to resign. Peel was succeeded by Lord John Russell, a rigid exponent of laissez-faire. In October, 1846, when over 90% of the potato crop of Ireland was blighted, Lord Russell set out his approach to the famine: "It must be thoroughly understood that we cannot feed the people...We can at best keep down prices where there is no regular market and prevent established dealers from raising prices much beyond the fair price with ordinary profits." 

Russell's policies emphasized employment rather than food for famine victims, in the belief that private enterprise, not government, should be responsible for food provision. He also stressed that the cost of Irish relief work should be paid for by Irishmen. Peel's Relief Commission was abolished and relief work was put in the hands of 12,000 civil servants in the Board of Works who only found work for 750,000 of the starving people. Relief efforts were private. Donations for the Irish Famine came from distant and unexpected sources. Calcutta, India sent 16,500 Pounds in 1847, Bombay another 3,000. Florence, Italy, Antigua, France, Jamaica, and Barbados sent contributions. The Choctaw tribe in North America sent $710. Many major cities in America set up Relief Committees for Ireland.
Although the potato crop failed, Ireland still produced and exported more than enough grain crops to feed the population. During the famine period average monthly export of food from Ireland was worth 100,000 Pound Sterling. Throughout that 5-year famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food. But that was a 'money crop' (could be exported) and not a 'food crop' and could not be interfered with.."

After mass starvation, death, eviction, and large scale emigration, the British Census Commissioners proclaimed in 1851 that Ireland benefited from the Famine: "In conclusion, we feel it will be gratifying to your Excellency to find that although the population has been diminished in so remarkable a manner by famine, disease and emigration between 1841 and 1851, and has been since decreasing, the results of the Irish census of 1851 are, on the whole, satisfactory, demonstrating as they do the general advancement of the country
This disaster, one of the greatest to happen in a European country in peacetime, was a tragic condemnation of the Union. For the dilatory manner in which the crisis was dealt with in London was a result of sheer ignorance. The Times of London wrote the obituary of the Irish nation by writing that "soon an Irish in his/her native land would be as rare as an American Indian in his/her native soil."

- Artem Horich

Myth 8 

Free Trade is the Answer 
BUT 
Free trade is not the answer. In most Third World countries exports boomed while hunger continued. When soybean exports from Brazil fed Japanese and European livestock, hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Those who control resources orient their production to more lucrative markets. Export crop production squeezes out basic food production. Pro-trade policies force working people to compete, where the basis of competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum environmental standards

The glowing sun is in the sky and the locusts cover the ground. There is no green grass in the fields and no smoke of cooking from the houses. They caught rats, or spread their nets for birds, or ground the wheat-stalks into powder, or kneaded the dry grass into cakes. The old and weak find it hard to trudge along. The young and solitary and feeble are not accustomed to run about. They wait for death in their houses, stripped of everything. They have no rice to cook, and the cravings of hunger are most painful. There is no way by which they can ascend to heaven, no door by which they can enter the earth. To die is better for them than to live.

"Although he spends most of his time at the new house in town, "when day came back he was back upon his land...And he smelled the fresh smell of the fields and when he came to his own land, he rejoiced in it." - Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth, Chapter 29, pg. 215 

Unfortunately demands of western powers and the devastation caused by rebellions coincided with other social crises challenging the Chinese government and people. Foremost among these was a tremendous population increase. From the late 17th century until the end of the 18th century, the population of China more than doubled, from nearly 150 million to over 300 million. The next period, 1779-1850, brought another 56% increase, bringing the total population to 430 million on the eve of the great Taiping rebellion. Few regions were left to absorb more internal migration. As in other times of Chinese history, there were creative responses: more intense irrigation, development of earlier ripening strains of rice that allowed double cropping, and the gradual acceptance of New World food crops such as maize, sweet potatoes, tobacco and peanuts for marginal lands. But these advances were double-edged: they had resulted in more food but also led to erosion of the intensely cultivated hills and created labor surplus, particularly in crowded areas like the lower Yangtze delta.
But it was not only food production and job opportunities that could not keep up with the population surge. The machinery of government had been well-suited for a smaller population, yet a proportionate increase in administrative personnel was not made to keep pace with the population. At that time, a direct magistrate, the lowest level official responsible for all local administration, was responsible for as many as 250,000 people. When real crises came, government officials were powerless to avoid them, and people had nothing to fall back on except for some meager donations and national and international relief efforts, which reached few people. One of the most disastrous famines in recent Chinese history took place during 1876-1879. It affected all five provinces of north China and claimed at least 9.5 million lives. The immediate cause was a three year drought which withered crops from 1873-6. 

Starvation1887-1888

This selection is a Chinese woman's account of what life was like in 1887-88 when another great famine afflicted North China. Ning Lao Tai Tai was old while narrating the story. At the time of this story, she is a young woman with two children, married to a man who has turned out to be an opium addict. By the late 19th century, it is estimated that in some areas of China, as much as 80% of the population of villages were frequent users of opium, and the average is estimated at perhaps 10% of the entire population.
"Day after day I sat at home. Hunger gnawed. What could I do? My mother was dead. My brother had gone away. When my husband brought home food I ate it and my children ate with me. A woman could not go out. If a woman went out to work the neighbors all laughed. They said, "So and so's wife has gone out to service." Or they said, "So and so's daughter has gone out to service." I did not know enough even to beg. So I sat at home and starved. I was so hungry one day that I took a brick, pounded it to bits, and ate it. It made me feel better. How could I know what to do? We women knew nothing but to comb our hair and bind our feet and wait at home for our men. When my mother had been hungry she had sat at home and waited for my father to bring her food, so when I was hungry I waited at home for my husband to bring me food. My husband sold everything we had. There was a fur hat. He wanted to sell it. But I begged him not to sell it. "Let's keep this." It was my uncle's. "Take my coat." He took the coat and sold it for grain. When he came home for food he drank only two bowls of millet gruel. I wondered why he ate so little. I looked and found that the hat was gone, and knew that he had sold it for opium. Those who take opium care not for food...." 
Reprinted with permission from Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman. (Stanford: Stanford University Press) c1967. pp. 55, 62. 

Myth 9 

Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
BUT 
Images of poor people as weak and hungry make us lose sight of the obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort. If they were truly passive, few of them could survive. People will feed themselves, if allowed to do so. It's not our job to 'set things right' for others. Our responsibility is to demand removal of obstacles, created by large corporations and governments, World Bank and IMF policies.

China: The largest famine in human history - 45 years later

Forty-five years ago China was in the middle of the world's largest famine: between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961 some 30 million Chinese starved to death. The famine had overwhelmingly ideological causes, and perhaps was the most overlooked cause of 20th century mortality. Two generations later China, rapidly modernizing since the early 1980s, is economically successful and producing adequate amounts of food. Yet it has still not undertaken an open, critical examination of this unprecedented tragedy.

The origins of the famine can be traced to Mao Zedong's decision to launch the Great Leap Forward. Mao, stressing the key role of heavy industry, made steel production the centerpiece of this effort. Millions of peasants were ordered to abandon all private food production (in some places even cooking utensils), to mine local deposits of iron ore and limestone, to cut trees for charcoal, to build simple clay furnaces, and to smelt metal. Newly formed agricultural communes planted less land to grain, which at that time accounted for more than 80% of China's food supply. At the same time, fabricated reports of record grain harvests were issued to demonstrate the superiority of communal farming. In reality, grain harvest plummeted. In addition human made ecological imbalances also contributed to the disaster. Several species of birds, thought to devour crops, were slaughtered nation wide (mostly by netting). This immediately led to a dramatic rise in the insect population (normally kept in check by the birds) resulting in increased crop losses. 
As an essentially social catastrophe, the famine showed clear marks of omission, commission, and provision, characteristic of all modern human made famines. The greatest omission was the failure of China's rulers to acknowledge the famine and promptly to secure food aid.Study of famines shows how easily they can be ended (or prevented) once the government decides to act but the Chinese government took three years to act.

Taking away all means of private food production, forcing peasants into mismanaged communes, and continuing food exports were the worst acts of commission. Preferential supply of food to cities and to the ruling elite was the deliberate act of selective provision. 
These actions are perfect illustrations of Amartya Sen's thesis about the critical link between political alienation of the governors from the governed: "The direct penalties of a famine are borne by one group of people and political decisions are taken by another. The rulers never starve. But when a government is accountable to the local populace it too has good reasons to do its best to eradicate famines. Democracy, via electoral politics, passes on the price of famines to the rulers as well." There was no such link in Mao's China. 
Official accounts still blame the natural catastrophes for the suffering but China's own statistics belie this explanation. During the 1990s the worst droughts and floods in China's modern history had only a marginal effect on the country's adequate food supply. Only a return to more rational economic policies after 1961, including imports of grain, ended the famine. 
The true extent of the famine was revealed to the world with the publication of single year age distributions from China's first reliable population census in 1982. These data estimate the total number of excess deaths between 1959 and 1961, and the first calculations by American demographers put the toll at between 16.5 and 23 million. More detailed later studies came up with 23 to 30 million excess deaths, and unpublished Chinese materials hint at totals closer to 40 million. We will never know the actual toll because the official Chinese figures for the three famine years greatly underestimate both the fall in fertility and the rise in mortality and we cannot accurately reconstruct these vital statistics. 
The lack of accuracy is as expected. This is true even for events unfolding amid unprecedented publicity. An attempt to discern a coherent picture of morbidity, mortality, and nutritional status during the 1991-2 famine in Somalia, an effort based on 23 separate field studies, ended in failure. Similar controversies surround the recent estimates of the excess deaths in Iraq attributable to economic sanctions after the Gulf war.
But no amount of additional information and no new and more sophisticated demographic analyses can change the fundamental conclusion: Mao's delusionary policies caused by far the largest famine in human history.Yet in contrast to other great famines of the 20th century (Ukraine 1932-3, Bengal 1943-4), the causes of the Chinese famine and an attribution of responsibility for its depth and duration have never been openly discussed in the afflicted nation

Beyond a narrow circle of China experts, the famine has also been virtually ignored by Western scholars and politicians. Western indifference to the great famine is seen as eyewitness stories of refugees who fled to Hong Kong were widely dismissed and rarely reported during the famine years. Two generations later a journalistic account is the only fairly comprehensive volume on the famine published in the West. Incredibly, the 1997 edition of the New Encyclopaedia Britannica does not even list the catastrophe in its tabulation of famines of the past 200 years. An in depth scholarly history of the famine has yet to be written. 
Although the famine and other disasters marked the end of the 'Great leap forward', this haphazard approach to governmental policy was not abandoned by the Chinese leadership who in 1966 proceeded to launch the 'Cultural revolution' with equally catastrophic social consequences. It is truly a tribute to the Chinese people that from such beginnings they have made such great progress in the last two decades. Interestingly, the Chinese government is still pursuing the fundamental concept of massive revolutionary projects to develop their nation. The Three Gorges dam currently being constructed on the Yangtze River is far larger than any similar project attempted so far. 
Weather does not seem to be a major factor in these human-made famines. The death toll is reflective of the regime's philosophy of the ends justifying the means, and a lack of humanitarian ethic. Or maybe just a bureaucratic mechanism gone haywire. 

- Valentin Ivanov

Myth 10 

More Aid Will Help the Hungry
BUT 
Foreign aid only reinforces, does not change, the status quo, works against the hungry. Where governments answer only to elites, aid not only fails to reach the hungry, it fuels the forces working against them. Aid used to impose free trade and market policies, promotes exports at the expense of food production, and provides the armaments that repressive governments use to stay in power. Better to use foreign aid budget for unconditional debt relief, as it is the debt burden that forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic anti-poverty programs.

Famine in Ethiopia 

Government officials stated that 15% of the October/November 2002 harvest was destroyed due to severe drought conditions. Resulting in failure of root vegetables and green crops, families that depend on subsistence farming will not only lack food, but also seeds for replanting next year. With the combination of livestock prices plummeting and the raging cereal prices, the poorer households are facing an even worse predicament in obtaining food. Their wage rate is reported to be 3 times lower in the current year than in the same period last year. According to the August 2003 appeal, there were 35,000 people in Ziquala, 34,920 people in Ambassel, 16,300 in Wadla, 17,455 in Kewet and 156,200 in the three woredas of South Gondar who were in need of external assistance in the upcoming months. All this happened due to internal political and international factors because even if the weather conditions were not favorable, it would be possible for the government to cope with the situation by appropriate governance. 

History leading to Famine in Ethiopia 

The Modern Age of Ethiopia, which began in 1855, brought four very powerful emperors into rule, which expanded the empire and shaped modern Ethiopia. The first of them, Theodore II, was a strong warrior who reassembled the army and used canons and roads to bring many of the regions under his control. He had delusions of grandeur, which were thwarted by those who did not share his dream of unity for Ethiopia. Theodore II ended his own life in 1868 after an argument with the British government. His successors, Yohannes and Menelik II, were able to triple the territory and add millions of people to Ethiopia. Emperor Yohannes struggled with invasions from Egypt, Italy, and Sudan during his rule from 1871 until he was assassinated by a sniper's bullet in 1889. Menelik II was crowned Emperor in 1889 after uniting all of the provinces, including some of them that had been cut off for centuries. In 1896, Emperor Menelik fought Italian armies at Adwa, which was a decisive victory because he stopped Italian expansion in Ethiopia. Menelik's army of nearly eighty thousand people had to live off of the land as they traveled north, which caused many deaths among the commoners as they ate their crops and livestock. During his rule, Menelik brought schools, banks, roads, telegraphs, and the first motor cars to Ethiopia. After Menelik's death in1913, the country plunged into crisis. After years of fighting in the royal family, his daughter, Zauditu, was finally crowned Empress in 1916; Ras Tafari, the son of Menelik's cousin, was named regent and heir to the throne. When Empress Zauditu died in 1930, Ras Tafari was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I, the nugusa negast (king of kings). 
Haile Selassie, which means "Lion of Judah," is regarded as one of the most important African leaders of the twentieth century. His first challenge was to preserve Ethiopian independence from Italian aggression. In the early 1930s, Benito Mussolini signed a pact of friendship with Ethiopia. However, in October 1935, Italy attacked Ethiopia in an attempt to avenge its loss at Adwa thirty-nine years earlier. The Emperor went into exile in Britain and asked the League of Nations to take action against Mussolini. Britain came to the aid of the Ethiopians, helping them to defeat the Italian armies. Haile Selassie was reinstated after Italy surrendered in May 1941. 
The Italian and Ethiopian war was a landmark in the history of the African people worldwide because the war pitted an aggressive European power against a small African country. It came to stand for the unequal struggle between Africa and Europe, between blacks and whites, which contributed to the stereotype of African identity. Haile Selassie is also known for the many reforms that he initiated during his reign, including the development of secular educational systems and bringing in Western economic and technical assistance. In 1955 he signed a new constitution which allowed parliamentary elections, restricted the power of the aristocracy and the church, and made Amharic the official language of Ethiopia. Selassie also instituted the Organization of Africa Unity, which is located in Addis Ababa. Selassie desired to unite the various tribes into a strong Ethiopia, with a central government built around one person-himself. To keep control, he handpicked weak people who would not go against his wishes. He even had control over the Christian church, which he proclaimed as the state religion of Ethiopia. He wanted the people to think of themselves as Ethiopians first and their respective tribes second. 
In 1974, a communist regime, also known as the "Derg," that included soldiers, young bureaucrats, teachers, and students, shattered Haile Selassie's control over the political and economic systems. From 1982 to 1984, northern Ethiopia had no rain to water the crops or for drinking. The Derg knew about this, but they did not act right away because they wanted to keep the Eritrean army, also known as the EPLF (Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front), from getting food and supplies. It was not until the BBC unveiled the story on October 23, 1984 that the government decided to respond. 
The drought of 1984 claimed the lives of many Ethiopians and those remaining were destitute. The people were deprived of basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, and medication. Many died as a result of starvation and from water-born diseases. It became very apparent that to recover from this terrible drought the people of Ethiopia would need outside assistance and instruction. A community-centered program was implemented, teaching them to use better farming practices as well as to take care of their land. This, along with better health care, would be a long-term solution rather than just giving free handouts. The government in Ethiopia both Haile Selassie and the Derg, failed because it did not respond to the desires of Ethiopians for a democracy, national self-determination, and development. 

Economy of Ethiopia 

Ethiopia's poverty-stricken economy is based on agriculture, which accounts for half of GDP, 85% of exports, and 80% of total employment. The agricultural sector suffers from frequent drought and poor cultivation practices, and as many as 4.6 million people need food assistance annually. Coffee is critical to the Ethiopian economy with exports of some $260 million in 2000. Other important exports include qat, live animals, hides, and gold. The war with Eritrea in 1999-2000 and recurrent drought have buffeted the economy, in particular coffee production. In November 2001 Ethiopia qualified for debt relief from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Under Ethiopia's land tenure system, the government owns all land and provides long-term leases to the tenants; the system continues to hamper growth in the industrial sector as entrepreneurs are unable to use land as collateral for loans. Despite this limitation, strong growth is expected to continue in the near term as good rainfall, the cessation of hostilities, and renewed foreign aid and debt relief push the economy forward. 

Myth 11 

We Benefit From Their Poverty 

BUT

Low wages abroad mean cheaper bananas, shirts and fast food in the industrialized world. Seeking cheaper labor abroad, corporations jeopardize jobs and wages in industrialized countries and perpetuate hunger and poverty in the third world. In a global economy, achievements of developed countries in employment, wages, and working conditions can be protected only when working people everywhere are treated equally. 

Myth 12 

Curtail Freedom to End Hunger? 

BUT 

There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom should be incompatible with ending hunger. Only a narrow definition of freedom - the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth and property and the right to use that property to one’s liking - is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger. The real definition of freedom is - economic security for all is the guarantor of liberty - this is essential to ending hunger.

Tetiana Zakharchenko