This week’s declaration of famine in parts of South Sudan shows that while lettuce and courgette shortages in Europe captured media attention, it is important to keep things in perspective. The rest of the world continues to fight lasting food imbalances caused by extreme weather, wars and regime changes, and other geopolitical shocks.
In the 20th century, 70m-80m people died as a result of major famines. Before 1965, 66m people died because of nine famines in the then Soviet Union, India and China, notably in Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward”. But in the latter part of the century, food crises became more concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa; 34 out of 65 famines were in this region.
However, the scale of individual famines has steadily diminished thanks to better infrastructure, increased international intervention and the use of genetically modified crops.