Short answers, pulled from the story.
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by factors that can include war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, economic catastrophe or government policies. It is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality.
Under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a Phase 5 famine requires three conditions at once: at least 20% of households facing extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition in children exceeding 30%, and a death rate above two people per 10,000 per day. If only the first is met, an area is in Phase 5 Catastrophe but cannot be officially declared a famine.
The largest famine of the 20th century was the 1958-1961 famine associated with the Great Leap Forward in China. Estimates of deaths range from 18 million to at least 42 million people, with a further 30 million births cancelled or delayed.
Deaths caused by famine declined sharply beginning in the 1970s and fell further since 2000. The World Peace Foundation reported that great famines killed an average of 928,000 people a year from the 1870s to the 1970s, while annual deaths since 1980 dropped to about 75,000, less than 10% of the earlier toll.
Famine was declared in Gaza in August 2025, the first time a famine has been officially confirmed in the Middle East region. More than half a million people were trapped in famine, and in July 2025 more than 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished, the highest monthly figure ever recorded.
On the 23rd of October 1984, BBC newsreader Michael Buerk described the Ethiopian famine as a "biblical famine" over footage of a feeding station near Korem. This prompted the Band Aid single organized by Bob Geldof with more than 20 pop stars, followed by the Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia.
The failure of exchange entitlements, or FEE, holds that famines are precipitated when people lose the ability to exchange what they own for the food they need. It explains why an agricultural laborer can starve when employment becomes erratic even while food remains available nearby, challenging the older Food availability decline hypothesis.