04 Jun What was famine?
The Irish economist, Cormac Ó Gráda, has written Eating People Is Wrong, a coolly rational, cautiously cheerful book about the most viscerally upsetting subject imaginable, mass death from hunger. It looks at the political economy of mass starvation, and why it is largely a thing of the past.
The United Nations defines a famine as a food emergency in which daily child mortality rates reach four per 10,000 children and at least a fifth of the population subsists on fewer than 2,100 calories per day.
Two centuries ago, Ó Gráda notes, these conditions “would probably have been the norm” in most of Europe. That is, what would today be called famine was a constant presence in one of the world’s richest regions. Today, for the first time in human history, famine has nearly vanished (though hunger hasn’t). Rather than being a permanent condition, it is almost always temporary.
For Ó Gráda, perhaps the world’s expert on the history and economics of famine, now is the time to understand this long-standing terror.
He asks: What causes famine? What is the best way to alleviate it—vast government programs that distribute food and punish speculators, or the promotion of free trade, in the belief that merchants will rush in to fill food shortfalls? Does aid, as critics allege, overwhelm local farmers and leave societies less able to cope with crises? Are famines often caused by political decisions?
Eating People Is Wrong, a series of five linked essays, is mostly intended to answer these questions…..