Table Of Content2
Famines:
istorica
The H I Context
Famines get the spotlight. The television specials and the historical
controversies and the sad Irish songs are about famines. But famine is a fairly
smalJpart ofthe world foodproblem. lfthrough some magical intervention we
could end famines, we would stilJ have an enormous problem of widespread,
pervasive, and permanent undernutrition. Although most of this book is fo-
cused on this pervasive and permanent condition, this chapter discusses
famine.
In the popular press, the wordfamine isused to describe any newsworthy
food shortage. Here we reserve the term to refer to localized, temporary, and
severe food shortages. Famines are almost always the result of aconfluence of
forces that include natural disaster and poor policy response. Of course, there
is a connection between the permanent state of widespread undernutrition and
the crisis of famine: in countries where undernutritionis a serious and com-
mon problem, it does not take much of anatural disaster to create a famine.
Brief descriptions of present and historical famines illustrate how natural
disasters and policy responses have interacted to create orexacerbate famines.
These examples also illustrate some of the ways that economists have studied
famines and policy approaches to famine.
The Irish Potato Famine
The Irish potato famine of the late J840s is fairly well known in the West be-
cause it spurred a wave of Irish emigration to the United States, transforming
US culture in ways that continue to be seen, especially on St. Patrick's Day,
and because the famine became emblematic of the British repression of Ire-
land.
Ireland of the 1840s was acountry of deep and widespread rural poverty.
Seventy-two percent of theIrish people were illiterate (Johnston 2003), and 37
percent lived in mud houses with a single room (Johnston 2003; Donnelly
7
8 TheFactsAbout Malnutrition
200 I:2). Percapita income in Ireland in the early I840s was only about 60per-
cent of tbe level in Britain (Mokyr 1985).
Poverty was especially prevalent in rural areas. About two-thirds of the
Irish population depended On agriculture for their livelihoods (Kinealy
2002:18), and 40 percent of these were landless laborers (Donnelly 2001:9).
Much of the land in the Irish countryside was owned in large tracts by land-
lords. Landless laborers acquired plots of land from the landlord and inreturn
either worked in the landlord's fields (primarily growing grain or flax for linen
for export, Orproducing butter for sale in urban areas) at paid a rent to the
landlord. A social structure that trapped Irish labor in the agricultural sector
caused labor productivity inthat sector to be about half that of British agricul-
tural workers (Donnelly 2001:9).
In this environment of poverty, a third of Irish households depended al-
most exclusively on potatoes for food (a farmer in pre-famine Ireland might
have consumed twelve Ormore pounds of poratoes per day). Potatoes have a
number of advantages as alaw-cost food source in Ireland: they can begrown
in relatively poor soil; they yield a high number of calories per acre; and they
are rich in protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. A diet of potatoes
and bunermilk (a low-value by-product of producing butter) provides better
nutrition than a diet consisting primarily of wheat or maize.
Because of the potato-based diet, and despite the widespread poverty, "the
Irish poor were among the tallest, healthiest and most fertile population inEu-
rope" (Kioealy 2002:32). (See Box 2.1 for a more general assessment of the
importance of the potato to European economic development.) The cheap and
nutritious potato diet served as a foundation for low-wage agriculture; cheap
food exported from Ireland in tum fueled the iodustrial revolution in Britain.
Inaddition, the low-wage labor provided a cushion protecting some landlords
from the consequences of their inefficient farming practices.
Box 2.1 The Importance of Potatoes in European Development
I
I
Research by economists Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian demonstrates the im-
portance of the potato in European development more generally: "[T]he intro-
duction oftbe potato was responsible ... for approximately one-quarter of the
growth in (European] population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900"
(2011: 593). Nunn and Qian are able toattribute causality because ofgeograph-
ical differences in the degree to which the potato was a suitable crop and be-
cause of differences in when the potato was introduced to different areas. (The
potato isa South American crop, unknown in Europe before Columbus's voy-
ages, and introduced Widely in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies.)
Il!:---=--~~ _
Famines: The Historical Context 9
Thepotato blight-s-a fungus that causes potatoes to tum black and rotten
as theygrow in the ground-had appeared in small areas prior to 1845. But
the blighthitabout half the crop in 1845, and destroyed nearly the entire crop
in 1846,1848,and 1849(the 1847 crop was partially successful). Estimates of
famine-related deaths range from 290,000 to 1,250,000 compared to Ireland's
pre-famine population of about 8million (Johnston 2003).
Once the severity of the potato blight was understood, a tremendous
amountof attentionwas devoted to the appropriate"policy response": What
could or should the government do? Throughout the nineteenth century, Ire-
land was governed by Great Britain. The choices made by the British govern-
ment, andthecriticisms of these choices, iIlustrateaphilosophical orideolog-
ical debateabouttheappropriaterelationship between government action and
private action. The policy decisions fall into three categories (identified here
with today's nomenclature): technology policy-what the government should
do to encourage better scientific understanding of the causes and conse-
quences ofthe potato blight; trade policy-what the government should do to
increase food imports or reduce food exports during a time of famine; and
poverty alleviation policy-what the government should do to help the poor.
The British government recognized the possibility of ending the famine
withatechnological fix, butitsefforts never came tofruition.Thegovernment
instituted aboardof scientific experts to drawconclusions abouthow to save
potatoes that had been infected by the blight. The board's recommendations
involved complex chemical procedures requiring materials and training un-
available to the starving Irish masses. Even if followed, the program promised
little hope of success. The government also appealed to the private sector by
promising to purchase and donate to all farmers any treatment that would kill
the blight. No successful antifimgal treatment was discovered until years after
the Irish famine.
Trade policy inthe mid-nineteenth century was the subject of intense ide-
ological debate. The individuals inpower during much of the famine were ar-
dent proponents of free trade, or laissez-faire-a policy of minimal govern-
ment intervention inmarkets. The Irish famine putpressure on both sides of
the debate over free trade. On the one hand, the famine provided the impetus
for repeal of the Com Laws that restricted imports offood into Ireland. On the
other hand, exports offood from Ireland continued. The rigidity ofthe position
infavor of free trade isreflected in an exchange between Randolph Routh, an
official in Ireland administering food distribution, and Charles Trevelyan, the
permanent head ofthe treasury for the British government (quoted inDonnelly
2001:69):
Routh: "I know there is great and serious objection to any interference
with these [food] exports, yet it is a most serious evil."
•v TheFactsAbout Malnutrition
Trevelyan: ..\ e beg of you not to COuntenance in any way the idea of pro-
hibiting .ponation. The di Couragemem and feeling of insecurity to the
[grain] Irllde from such aproceeding would prevent itsdoing even any im-
mediare good; and there cannot be a doubt that it would inflict a perma-
nent injury On the country."
ars
m hol point 10evidence of ubstantial reductions ingrain exports
to n rude that "even if exports had been prohibited, Ireland lacked sufficient
food ... to lave off famine" (Gray 1982:46). Kinealy notes that exports of
ther food commodities remained high, and concludes: "The Irish poor did not
larve becau e there was an inadequate supply of food within the country, they
tarv d becau e political, cOmmercial, and individuaJ greed was given priority
ever thc saving of lives" (2002: 116).
If trade policy illu trates the role of ideology in policy, poverty assistance
Orrelief policy illu trate the law of unintended consequences. Policies to help
the poor during the famine were under constant discussion and revision. The
government polieie included such aspects as:
• Importation of grain from the United States.
•"Work houses" where poor families could live.
• Public works programs to provide incomes to thejobless.
•Soup kitchens distributing prepared food.
The Cost of these programs was financed in large part through a tax on
Irish landlords. The amount of the tax depended on how many poor house-
holds Ortenants l.ived on the landlord's property. Landlords realized that they
could reduce their tax burden by eVicting tenants from their farms and destroy-
ing the tenant cottages. Inthis way, the policy intended to help the poor actu-
ally ended up separating many poor people from their shelter and from their
means of growing food.
The evictions had the impact of consoJidating JandhoJdings into larger
farms. Between 1841 and 1851, the number of small farms (5 acres or less)
dropped from over 300,000 to Jess than 100,000. The number of large farms
(30 acres or more) tripled (Johnston 2003). Many landlords, having Jost their
rent-paying tenants, went bankrupt. Over the next decades, the landlord-tenant
system died out, and it became COmmonplace for Irish farmers toOwnthe land
that they worked.
Some of the better-off tenants Wholost their homes to eviction had suffi-
cient resources to emigrate to the Americas. During the 1840s, an estimated
1.3 million Irish people emigra.ted. The conditions of their voyages were
harsh: perhaps as many as 40 percent ofthe emigrants died during thepassage
to the Americas (Abbot 2003).
Mike Davis (200 1), in his book on late-.Victorian era hoJocausts, de-
Famines: The Historical C,ontext 11
scribes aset of circumstances andideologies thatled to andexacerbated the
Bengal famine of the 1870s that are quite similar to those described here for
the Irish famine.
Famines Created by Government Policies
Two of the worst famines in the past century occurred in centrally planned
economies: the famine in the Ukraine of the 1930s and the Great Leap For-
ward famine in China of the 1950s. If the Irish potato famine illustrates that a
famine canoccur inacountrygoverned by those who embrace a laissez-faire
ideology, these two famines illustrate that state socialism is not immune to
poor policy choices thatcause orexacerbate famine conditions.
The Ukrainian Famine, 1932-1933
By the early 1930s, the urban industrial regions of the Soviet Union had been
transformed into a collectively state-owned, centrally planned system. In
1929, Stalin introduced apolicy of compulsory collectivization of agriculture.
Under the collectivization plan, all of theproductive assets-land, machinery,
cattle, and so forth-{)f25 million farmers were to be aggregated into 250,000
collective and state farms.
Even if ccllectivization had been enthusiasticaJly embraced by Soviet
farmers, the process of reorganization would no doubt have been awkward,
and aggregate agricultural production may have decreased. There were dif-
ficulties obtaining agricultural machinery and managing the transportation
of agricultural goods, as well as inexperienced managers of the new large
farms,
In addition to these problems, the collectivization process was resisted
by fanners. For example, farmers slaughtered their horses and cattle rather
than surrender them to the collective. This resistance was especially strong
in the Ukraine, where peasants had always cultivated their own land and
therefore "had a much stronger sense of private ownership and deeper feel-
ing of freedom and independence" compared to Russian peasants (Dolot
1985:xiv).
The objectives ofthe central Soviet government during the early 1930s
were therefore to maintain ample food supplies for the urban industrial sector
while completing the transformation of agriculture to a coJlective system. In
the Ukraine, these objectives were pursued by giving farmers aquota of grain
that had to be shipped. Farmers who resisted joining the collectives were
forced to ship their entire crops:
Stepan Schevchenko was apoor farmer ... like therestof us [butdifferent}
from us in only one way: he hadcategorically refused tojoin the collective
farm. He paid off allhis taxes forthe year 1932, andapparentlythought that
the government would leave him alone.... But he was overly optimistic.
..
