BS: On the cause of Famines

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Senoufou
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 04:23 PM

In addition to all the actual famines, however caused, there is also grinding poverty, which results in perpetual hunger (not necessarily starvation, but certainly malnutrition and related diseases) I should think this accounts indirectly for many millions of lives lost. I've seen it happening in Senegal, Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, all of which are reasonably viable states, but where there are countless people struggling to feed themselves and their families on practically nothing.

The sad thing is that globally there is enough food for all, if only it were to be shared out fairly, and if authoritarian states changed their regimes. I only know about Africa, but there, some governments prioritise party propaganda, military financing, self-interest and corrupt siphoning off resources for personal investments elsewhere. This is particularly the case in the Horn of Africa, but to a lesser extent in West Africa too.

For example, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo have enough agricultural and economic resources to feed vast numbers, but sadly they don't do so.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 04:17 PM

Whoops. definitely in the wrong thread!

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 04:16 PM

Here is a classic comment:
The Labour leader also said in a Passover message on Friday that there is a "need to do better", and promised Jewish people he is their "ally" in the fight against anti-Semitism. "You recall the saying, 'Evil happens when good men do nothing.' I have not been attending parliament because I'm on sick leave, but if I had been there on Monday last week, I would have joined the protest", he said. (Keith Vaz mk 2 Mayhap?)

    I am surprised Guido has not trampled all over this. I might have to cc himm.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 03:47 PM

The only serious comment I would make is that accepted truths can change over time. The view of experts has given us global cooling, global warming and climate change. All within the space of several decades.
There may now be a consensus as to which way the wind is blowing, but the exact nature of how the wind blows is still by no means settled science,. neither is the manner by which the many varying factors inter relate.
Or to phrase it another way. The road to hell is paved with very unevenly laid slabs that trip the unwary and lead up blind alleys.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 02:04 PM

"Experts" tend to be a word used by the likes of the Mail and Express to ridicule, er, experts. My dad calls it the cult of the Philistine.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 01:45 PM

But only experts found out how measure the circumference of the earth (Eratosthenes) and others how to fly. Beware dismissal of experts as well!

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 12:44 PM

Experts claimed the earth was flat, that rocks could not fall from the sky, that man could never fly. Beware of experts - Be very aware!

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 11:54 AM

"Self-Appointed Experts."
Well, no wonder there is animosity in a consideration of history,
if there is arrogance at play.
In fact a consideration of history ought to be humbling,
and there is a list too long for somebody as lazy as me
of justifications for humility when facing history.

Is it possible to consider history
as the best of schoolteachers do before young, maturing students:
as a subject of study that is never finished, even if the events
are many thousands of years in the past?

And to consider not only what is correct and accurate,
but what is possible --
so as not to impose limitations on critical thinking,
but to open both mind and heart?

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 11:44 AM

Famines are always political. If your neighbour's starving and you don't do anything to help, that's political.
Might be true for the modern world but nonsense for the early civilisations and even largely true up until the mid 17th century. Prior to that time no "industrial" farming of any kind existed, it was little better than subsistance for most. Even if there was a localised political will to alleviate hungeer the infrastructure and trade links made such efforts of limited use. Holland was the first country to have developed enough agricultural expertise and trading links enabling avoidance of european famines. This was closely followed by England.
After this time the means to avoid famine in Europe existed, in many cases the political will to implement the means did not always exist.
An example of the will to assist is Operations Manna and Chowhound, consisting of airdrops in 1944/5 in the Netherlands to counter a German blockade.
The middle east is impacted by by climate cycles driven by anomalies in sea-surface temperatures. These cyclical changes in turn affect surface temperatures and precipitation on land, and their impact can last for decades. Certain of these areas are stressed by reduced yields, overpopulation and sporadic/continuous warfare. The Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Niger. In some   of these areas the UN aid agencies are active, in others not so active. In the Yemen I cannot recall seeing them, or in Syria. I did see them infesting 5 star hotels in Eritrea, but not appearing to do much else. Even when aid arrives it is not totally unknown for local warlords to commandeer it and sell it on the open market. If the political will was there this theft could be stamped on and examples made. However when many of these wars are in reality western driven proxy wars there are no yes/no responses. The left hand does not wish to communicate with the right. It is Strange these disputed areas only offer potential corridors or rumours of resources under the sand.

The Akkadian Empire in Syria, 2334 BC - 2193 BC.
The Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, 4200 years ago
The Late Bronze Age (LBA) civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Maya civilization of 250 - 900 AD in Mexico.
The Tang Dynasty in China, 700 - 907 AD.
The Tiwanaku Empire of Bolivia's Lake Titicaca region, 300 - 1000 AD
.............
The main cause of the above civilisations to collapse was drought and resultant famine/instability.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Thompson
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 10:40 AM

Famines are always political. If your neighbour's starving and you don't do anything to help, that's political.

A few facts on the 1840s:

Ireland produced enough food to keep the population well fed and in comfort during the five years of the Famine - grain, meat, vegetables, butter, cheese, etc. But that food was exported, the ships loaded and sailing under military guard. Fishermen were fined and their nets and boats confiscated if they didn't pay tax for using nets. There was also a level of official ignorance that seems likely to have been deliberate - for instance, it was not until a Quaker-commissioned report on fish stocks that the myth of the Dogger Bank swarming with herring ceased to be repeated (the fish stocks had moved away from Ireland's shores due to the same climate events that caused the failure of the potato crops.

There's not a lot of point in a discussion by well-fed self-appointed experts. If you want to do a quick study of famine and its causes, go on over to South Sudan or to the Yemen. I'll be waiting with interest for your report.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 09:01 AM

I meant the point about the dependency on the potato as a primary cause. It simply didn't have to be that way.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 09:00 AM

The last point is arguable, especially when you read about the sheer amounts of food that were being exported as hundreds of thousands starved. The dependence on the spud was no natural outcome. Food prices were beyond ordinary Irish people and the need for profit-making trumped the need to feed the population. Of course there were shining exceptions, examples of wonderful humanitarian behaviour. But those abundant food exports (read about the obscene quantities of butter that were being exported at the very height of the famine), the high food prices and the deaths of hundreds of thousands are inextricably linked. Cause and effect writ large.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 08:56 AM

I hate it when only half gets posted. The rest below:


http://www.drb.ie/essays/cruelty-grievance-denial

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/oct/05/weekend.lukedodd

https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/welfare/articles/crossmanv.html

The high dependency on the potato as a(the) staple food crop created the major problem in Ireland, but it needs to be considered in a wider context of crop yields throughout Europe over the same interval.
The_European_subsistence_crisis_of_1845-1850_A_comparative_perspective
The earlier Irish famine of 1740/1 was the last gasps of the little ice age.
"An extraordinary climatic shock, the "Great Frost" struck Ireland and the rest of Europe between December 1739 and September 1741, after a decade of relatively mild winters. Its cause remains unknown. Charting its course sharply illuminates how climate events can result in famine and epidemic disease, and affect economies, energy sources, and politics"

It would be an interesting study to correlate climate upheaval with social upheaval, war, famine and radically altered political structures.
It is of note that crop yields show a far greater negative response to increased temperature than lower temperatures. Perhaps far more attention should be paid to this fact.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Raggytash
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 08:53 AM

"The high dependency on the potato as a(the) staple food crop created the major problem in Ireland"

There may be a modicum of truth in that statement, however vast quantities of food was exported from Ireland to overseas markets (primarily Britain) throughout the famine. So shortage of food itself was not the problem.

A brief overview is attached:

Irish Food Exports

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Iains
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 08:38 AM

We shouldn't allow history to be written by the manipulators of people.
Kind of difficult to avoid. Actions have consequences. How those actions are explained immediately polarises opinion. Therein lies the problem.
To judge the irish famine in terms of today's mores totally distorts a true explanation, that was a child of it's time. Against this must be judged modern famines. With modern infrastructure, International aid agencies and the UN the only reason modern famines occur is because of lack of political will to alleviate the problem. In the time of the Irish famine conditions and attitudes were totally different to the modern day . Back then social relief programs were embryonic. I am not going to get into an argument about the causes of the famine because no agreement will ever be reached. I will point out though that In the wake of the Union, Ireland's economy declined rapidly, and abject poverty and subsistence farming became the norm for a majority of the rapidly increasing population. As a result, by 1840 most Anglo-Irish families were heavily in debt. The famine completely beggared them. It is very easy to blame the English but that needs to be tempered by a full appreciation of the Poor Law in Ireland and that the landowners were responsible for paying the local rate on holdings worth less than £4(Ithink) Like any other complex subject the true explanation is shades of grey. The potato blight in Scotland also had a major impact but those supposedly "heartless" landlords were in far better financial state than their Irish Cousins and did help.

" Devine stresses that recent historical opinion suggests that some landowners were very active in famine relief and a good few went bankrupt in their struggle to help distressed people on their estates. As early as 1843, for example, out of an estimated 7,000 estates in Scotland “one twentieth” were already in the hands of the receivers, accounting for land with a total rental value of over £700,000 – and this was to rise to £1,300,000 in 1847 and increase further to £2,000,000 by 1849."


http://www.drb.ie/essays/cruelty-grievance-denial

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/oct/05/weekend.lukedodd

https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/welfare/articles/crossmanv.html

The high dependency on the potato as a(the) staple food crop created the major problem in Ireland, but it need to be considered in a wider context of crop yields throughout Europe over the same interval.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 07:10 AM

We should be careful that we don't accidentally exonerate guilty parties from blame by using emotive words like "famine" that imply natural disaster to characterise events that have origins largely caused by deliberate human actions. In the famines in the mid-80s in East Africa, a few people were getting rich by exporting cash crops such as coffee and avocados. In the Irish so-called famine, hundreds of thousands of Irish people starved as food exports from Ireland increased, making good money for a few people. The Irish starved not through lack of food but because they couldn't afford the prices that made exporting the food to England so lucrative. We shouldn't allow history to be written by the manipulators of people.

Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 06:11 AM

This has - correctly - been moved out of the Brexit thread.

I was saying that while the origin is mostly a natural event, it only becomes a famine or flood disaster when it exceeds our preparedness for it. To take a few examples: the Amazon can go into spate very dramatically but it doesn't flood in the sense of disaster because the people who live along the banks normally have a second shelter on higher ground and move into it when necessary. So the event rarely turns into a disaster. Similarly indigenous housing in areas prone to hurricanes or earthquakes are often adapted to survive. I was particularly struck in a museum in Chile where the traditional housing had several layer of slatted walls. This allowed no direct sight for privacy, and cut out minor drafts, but in a gale or hurricane the wind simply passed through.

But events turn into disasters when we don't take account of these natural events. In Georgetown in Barbados there is a ruined Cathedral because the English who went there insisted on trying to build an English style cathedral. So come every hurricane, the roof blew off. Eventually they had to learn it was just unsuitable for the conditions.

So I do not see flooding and famine and the rest as just disasters inflicted on us by nature: even excluding global warming, mankind plays a big role in determining whether we have a manageable event or a disaster.

Subject: BS: On the cause of Famines
From: Raggytash
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 05:41 AM

There are numerous causes of Famines. Fire, flood, wars, crop failure, and sometimes deliberate policy.

What is most important is our reactions to them.

Many eminent writers have claimed the Irish Famine of 1845 to 1851 could have been alleviated had the British government reacted differently, and certain individuals have been cited as being the most culpable, notably Charles Trevelyan.