Donna Richmond, age 14, of E1 Paso, Texas, for her question:
WHAT CAUSES FAMINE?
Famine is a prolonged food shortage that causes widespread hunger and death. Nearly all famines result from crop failures. Although there are many factors that help create a famine, the chief causes of crop failure include drought or a prolonged lack of rain, too much rainfall and flooding and plant diseases and pests.
Throughout history, famine has struck at least one area of the world every few years. Most of the developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America have barely enough food for their people and millions in these countries go hungry even without famine.
Drought ranks as the chief cause of famine. Certain regions of China, India and Russia have always been those hardest hit by famine. All three have large, near desert areas where the rainfall is light and variable. In dry years crops may fail and famine may strike.
When too much rain falls, rivers become swollen and overflow their banks and destroy farmland. Other crops can rot in the fields because of the excess water.
Plant diseases and pests sometimes produce famine. Between 1841 and 1851, for example, Ireland's population decreased by about two and a half million persons through starvation, disease and emigration because a plant disease destroyed most of the nation's potato crop.
Other causes of famine include both natural and human ones. Such natural disasters as cyclones, earthquakes, early frosts and tidal waves very often have affected large areas of the world, destroying enough crops to create famines.
War may result in a famine if many farmers leave their fields and join the armed forces. In some cases, an army has deliberately created a famine to starve an enemy into surrender. The army destroys stored food and growing crops and sets up a blockade to cut off the enemy's food supply.
Poor transportation may also contribute to a famine because of the difficulty of shipping food where it is needed.
The chief effects of famine on a country include death and disease, destruction of livestock and seed, crime and other social disorders and migration.
Death and disease are the main and most immediate effects of famine. People who lack sufficient food lose weight and grow extremely weak. Many famine victims become so weak and feeble that they die from simple ailments. Old people and young children are the first to die. Famines also increase the possibility of epidemics. Cholera, typhus and other diseases take many lives because people weakened by hunger do not recover easily from disease.
Destruction of livestock and seed during famine prolongs the disaster.
Crime and other social disorders increase during a famine. Such crimes as thefts and looting multiply. Prolonged famine often results in emigration when the starving people leave the stricken country to find better lives elsewhere.