Famine, a Short History

This short history of famines comes with good news: times have changed for the better. Although hunger and malnutrition still exist on a large scale, famines are not as frequent as in the past and do not result in the same massive death tolls. Whereas famines in India and China at the end of the nineteenth century caused the loss of some 30 million lives, recent food crises have not caused such widespread death and devastation.

Ó Gráda presents a very interesting and well-documented historical account of hunger, analysing causes and consequences, and reviewing the responses developed by human societies from Antiquity to the present. Various factors, including lower costs of food and transport, improved technology, and better information have reduced the risks of famine and made responses more timely and effective. Ó Gráda recalls, for instance, that it took two weeks for the first newspaper to report a tsunami in India in 1942 (p. 162), a striking contrast with the worldwide live coverage that any disaster receives today.

The ubiquity of international relief organisations is seen as another factor that explains the improvement, although little is said about how they have contributed. Instead, Ó Gráda severely criticises these organisations, pointing out, for instance, that NGOs have become permanent structures, in perpetual need of finding resources to maintain their bureaucratic structures, which sometimes encourages their tendency to exaggerate the severity of the situation that they witness on the ground (p. 222). This criticism raises fundamental questions for anyone sincerely committed to relief work. The reader may, however, end up feeling rather frustrated by a quick and easy conclusion about the need for independent monitoring of the work of NGOs (p. 224). Clearly, the author could have pushed his analysis further by demonstrating some positive evolutions, such as the reorientation of some organisations which has led them from relief work alone to take on advocacy and campaigning activities, or to providing support for a more active citizenry in developing countries.

NGOs' role in exposing crisis situations - especially where states fail to assume their responsibilities - and their ability to influence opinions and policies could have also been considered in the compelling discussion of the role of ideologies in the history of famines. Ó Gráda recalls how the Malthusians denied the innate right of the poor to subsistence and advocated only limited interventions, because of the 'moral hazard implications of relieving the starving' (p. 205). Ideology and 'political economy' have killed in Ireland and India. The Malthusian dogma seems to have lost ground since the Indian famines in the 1870s and the subsequent establishment of famine codes which recognised that the primary responsibility of the state was to protect the lives of the people in times of crisis. The shadow of Malthus is, however, still around: famine relief in East or West Africa has been opposed in recent years by governments or donors concerned with the risks of dependency and market distortions, with uncanny echoes of the situation in India and Ireland, where the same argument was invoked 150 years earlier (p. 158)!

The recent rise in food prices resurrected old debates over states' intervention and regulation of food markets. Famine: a Short History makes a helpful contribution to these debates, showing that blind faith in the market has cost millions of lives in the past … just like ill-driven public policies, especially those of authoritarian states such as China or the Soviet Union (pp. 233-41). The author stresses that sound public actions through the maintenance of food stocks, state distributions, or market interventions have often been essential in alleviating hunger and responding to famines. He also recalls that farmers' reliance on monoculture has been a major factor of famine in the past. The Irish potato famine is a famous example, but the book reminds us of other examples, such as the famine in France when millions died in the seventeenth century after a failure of the wheat crop. Recent food crises in Southern Africa exposed a very similar vulnerability, arising from the over-reliance of farmers and consumers on corn. These are important reminders at a time of intense debate about the solutions to the twofold challenge of world hunger and climate change. Many NGOs, farmers' groups, and development experts are opposing industrial agriculture, generally based on mono-cropping and high reliance on external inputs and chemical fertilisers, and instead they are promoting a more diversified agriculture, using sustainable practices and a mix of locally adapted crops.

By calling his book a short history, Ó Gráda warns us that he is not presenting a complete account of the subject. Readers hungry to learn from history might be frustrated by at least one limitation: the scant consideration given to international dynamics, especially with respect to agricultural trade and the functioning of global food markets. Current policy discussions would have benefited from a more detailed analysis of this issue, which is also a story of inequity and imbalance in international relations. Mike Davis, another historian of famines, has shown, for instance, how Indian famines occurred when the construction of railways made it easier to export food products to Europe to feed a growing urban population, leaving people in deficit states with little food to buy for domestic consumption (Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, Verso 2001). The expansion of agro-fuels and land grabs which divert food from the plates of the poorest do indeed induce a sense of déjà vu.