Famines

Famines, or times during which there is a scarcity, more or less severe, more or less local, of food-supplies, are due to a variety of causes. They have been perhaps oftenest caused by drought or deficiency of rainfall, especially in tropical regions; by excess of rainfall, giving origin to floods and inundations, more particularly in northern climes; by excessive frosts and other irregular incidences of climatic conditions; by the ravages of insects (flies, locusts, ants, grasshoppers, &c.) and vermin (rats, mice, &c.); by the devastations of war; and by the wholesale destruction of forests, especially on hillsides, giving rise to drought—a cause which has operated more particularly in northern China. Apart from these causes, the occurrence of famine in a particular locality depends upon the ratio between the population and the food-supply for the time being of that district, or, more correctly, between the amount and extent of the failure in the supplies and the density of the local population. Amongst the factors which exert an injurious effect upon the food-supply must be mentioned not only backward and inadequate methods of agriculture, but sometimes also the system of agriculture in vogue; deficient means of communication and transport; misappropriation of the soil—i.e. using it for growing crops which add nothing to the food-supply when the land that is devoted to the production of the necessaries of life is inadequate for the normal wants of the population; legislative interference, either preventing the free exploitation and development of the complete resources of the soil, or throwing obstacles in the way of the natural distribution of food-supplies; the ill-regulated distribution of food-supplies apart from governmental interference; sudden immigrations of large bodies of people into districts of confined area; the social customs and agricultural habits of a people making them principally dependent upon one kind of food, as the Irish upon the potato; the religious belief of a people restricting them to certain prescribed kinds of food; lack of foresight and energy in the administrative authorities, provincial, national, or general, as the case may be, together with the limited extent and inaccessibility of the resources they have at their command; insufficient resources and powers of organisation of private merchants; undue facilities for commercial speculation in grain and other necessaries of subsistence; and the misapplication of grain, &c.—i.e. the using of it in undue quantity for brewing or distilling, and the like. Attempts have also been made to trace some law of relation between the occurrence of famines, more particularly in India, and the sun-spot cycle, the links of connection being the meteorological effects that are supposed to manifest themselves on our planet in dependence upon the cyclical phases of the waxing and waning of the sun's spots.

Famines cannot be wholly prevented. The powerful climatic causes to which they are principally due cannot be controlled by human agency, except to an extremely small degree, chiefly by the maintenance of river-banks and sea-banks, and by the regulation of the forests. The local conditions are in every case so diverse, and often so complicated, that it is fruitless to attempt to give more than a few general rules. In cases where the country is dependent upon irrigation for its fertility, it should be the first care of the inhabitants, or, failing them, of the government, to make provision for the storing of water, to regulate its distribution, and to utilise it in the most economical ways. But the most efficient methods of rendering governmental assistance are to improve the means of transport, to encourage more scientific systems of agriculture, to give warning to districts that are likely to be affected of the threatened approach of a period of scarcity, and then to leave the rest to the enterprise of private merchants. There should be no legislative restrictions on the free transmission of food-supplies from centres of abundance to districts which are suffering from famine. The systems of agriculture best calculated to prevent the occurrence of famines and counteract their devastating effects are perhaps those in which the quantity of land in each farm is large enough to allow of a sufficient variety of crops being produced year by year, so that the cultivator need not necessarily be dependent upon the success of one single crop for his sustenance, or even his livelihood.

The appended list includes a few of the more important famines of the world, either from their historical significance or from the great destruction of life that attended them. A much more detailed list, together with a couple of excellent papers on the subject, by C. Walford, will be found in the Journal of the Statistical Society (1878-79).

It was after a famine of 1586 that the poor-law in England had its beginning. That of 1781-83 in India led to the institution for the relief of the native poor called Monegar Choultry. See also Reports of Indian Famine Commission, and Dighy, Famine Campaign in Southern India (Lond. 1878).