Surveying government and crowd responses ranging from the late Middle Ages through to the early modern era, Buchanan Sharp's illuminating study examines how the English government responded to one of the most intractable problems of the period: famine and scarcity. The book provides a comprehensive account of famine relief in the late Middle Ages and evaluates the extent to which traditional market regulations enforced by thirteenth-century kings helped shape future responses to famine and scarcity in the sixteenth century. Analysing some of the oldest surviving archival evidence of public response to famine, Sharp reveals that food riots in England occurred as early as 1347, almost two centuries earlier than was previously thought. Charting the policies, public reactions and royal regulations to grain shortage, Sharp provides a fascinating contribution to our understanding of the social, economic, cultural and political make-up of medieval and early modern England.

Despite repeated interventions by governments, donors and NGOs in recent years, food insecurity continues and developing countries are forced to rely on food aid again and again. The original idea of Starter Pack was to give a tiny bag of agricultural inputs - fertiliser and seed - to every smallholder farmer in Malawi. Although the programme did not work as originally intended, it was successful in achieving food security. The scaling down of the programme was a major contributor to the food crisis which hit Malawi (and other countries in Southern Africa) at the beginning of 2002. For once, we have a success story about how hunger can be tackled efficiently. This book assesses the case of the Starter Pack programme in Malawi, and whether it can be replicated elsewhere. It covers the practicalities of implementing such a large programme and the policy debates.

With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. Because historical records of the Victorian period in Ireland were generally written by the middle and upper classes, relatively little has been known about those who suffered the most, the poor and destitute. But in 2006, archaeologists excavated an until then completely unknown intramural mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union Workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century Irish society.Seeking help at the workhouse was an act of desperation by people who were severely malnourished and physically exhausted. Overcrowded, it turned into a hotspot of infectious disease--as did many other union workhouses in Ireland during the Famine. Geber reveals how medical officers struggled to keep people alive, as evidenced by cases of amputations but also craniotomies. Still, mortality rates increased and the city cemeteries filled up, until there was eventually no choice but to resort to intramural burials. Deceased inmates were buried in shrouds and coffins--an attempt by the Board of Guardians of the workhouse to maintain a degree of dignity towards these victims. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland's Great Hunger.

The Great Famine in Ireland was a catastrophe of immense proportions. Eviction, emigration and death from starvation were widespread. Landlords, eager to dispose of 'surplus' tenants, engaged in 'assisted passages', whereby tenants were given financial incentives to emigrate. The clearances of uneconomic tenants from the 85,000-acre Coolattin Estate in County Wicklow by Lord Fitzwilliam were the most organised in Ireland during and after the Famine years. From 1847 to 1856 Fitzwilliam removed 6,000 men, women and children and arranged passage from New Ross in Wexford to Canada on emigrant ships such as the Dunbrody. Most were destitute and many were ill on arrival in Quebec and New Brunswick. Hunger and overcrowding at quarantine stations, such as the infamous Grosse Ile, resulted in further disease and death. Jim Rees explores this tragedy, from why the clearances occurred to who went where and how some families fared in Canada.

This highly interdisciplinary book studies historical famines as an interface of nature and culture. It will bring together researchers from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities. With reference to recent interdisciplinary concepts (disaster studies, vulnerability studies, environmental history) it will examine, how the dominant opposition of natural and cultural factors can be overcome. Such an integrated approach includes the "archives of nature" as well as "archives of man". It challenges deterministic models of human-environment interaction and replaces them with a dynamic, historicising approach. As a result it provides a fresh perspective on the entanglement of climate and culture in past societies.

In an age of uncertainty about how climate change may affect the global food supply, industrial agribusiness promises to keep the world fed. Through the use of factory "farms," genetic engineering, and the widespread application of chemicals, they put their trust in technology and ask consumers to put our trust in them. However, a look behind the curtain reveals practices that put our soil, water, and health at risk. What are the alternatives? And can they too feed the world?
The rapidly growing alternative food system is made up of people reclaiming their connections to their food and their health. A forty-year veteran of this movement, Mark Winne introduces us to innovative "local doers" leading the charge to bring nutritious, sustainable, and affordable food to all. Heeding Emerson's call to embrace that great American virtue of self-reliance, these leaders in communities all across the country are defying the authority of the food conglomerates and taking matters into their own hands. They are turning urban wastelands into farms, creating local dairy collectives, preserving farmland, and refusing to use genetically modified seed. They are not only bringing food education to children in elementary schools, but also offering cooking classes to adults in diabetes-prone neighborhoods--and taking the message to college campuses as well. Such efforts promote food democracy and empower communities to create local food-policy councils, build a neighborhood grocery store in the midst of a food desert, or demand healthier school lunches for their kids. Winne's hope is that all of these programs, scaled up and adopted more widely, will ultimately allow the alternative food system to dethrone the industrial.
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"Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin' Mamas "challenges us to go beyond eating local to become part of a larger solution, demanding a system that sustains body and soul.

The book focuses on food security highlighting the role of indigenous knowledge and scientific research in addressing the plight of poor small-scale agricultural producers. Rapidly growing global population and global policies and management governing sustainability, hunger, food security and poverty alleviation are discussed. Additionally, impacts of probable climate change, research on land productivity and performance of dependable food crops i.e. cassava and pearl millet are discussed. Analyzed in great detail are roles of small stock, urban/peri-urban agriculture and advantages of climate-smart agriculture and participatory research in enhancing food security of the small-scale agricultural producers in Southern Africa.

In 1837, the power of Daniel O'Connell's oratory focused the attention of Europeans on Ireland. They were horrified at what they saw there. The Irish poor - a third of the population - had no food except the potatoes they grew, and not enough clothing to cover themselves. They went hungry for two months of the year, and half-naked for all the year. Yet this would be their last 'good' decade before more than a million of them would vanish into unmarked graves in the 1840s. The idealistic young Baron Eotvos - a humanitarian and already a much-praised poet - struggled to understand how Ireland could have been reduced to this state under English rule, and why English journalists wrote with such bigotry about the Irish. In Hungary, he was a campaigner for the freedom of serfs, but conceded that those serfs lived in better conditions and had more protection than Irish tenants and labourers. The only protection for the Irish poor came from illegal organizations such as the Whiteboys.His visit coincided with a pivotal moment in Irish history, when debate was raging about the introduction of a 'Poor Law' (with Poor Tax to pay for it) - a charitable-sounding term for a cruel Act aimed at clearing the land of people who had no other means of survival. His deeply researched summary of the English occupation of Ireland - uninfluenced by modern revisionism - makes compelling, often harrowing reading.

In "Closing the Food Gap," food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone?
To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another.
Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with the benefits of CSAs and farmers' markets; in "Closing the Food Gap," he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically comic stories from his many years running a model food organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level.
Using anecdotal evidence and a smart look at both local and national policies, Winne offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table.

With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. In 2006, archaeologists discovered a mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Irish Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century society. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland's Great Hunger.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 presents updated estimates of undernourishment and progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets. A stock-taking of where we stand on reducing hunger and malnutrition shows that progress in hunger reduction at the global level and in many countries has continued but that substantial additional effort is needed in others. The 2014 report also presents further insights into the suite of food security indicators introduced in 2013 and analyses in greater depth the dimensions of food security - availability, access, stability and utilization. By measuring food security across these dimensions, the suite of indicators can provide a detailed picture of the food security and nutrition challenges in a country, thus assisting in the design of targeted food security and nutrition interventions. Sustained political commitment at the highest level is a prerequisite for hunger eradication. It entails placing food security and nutrition at the top of the political agenda and creating an enabling environment for improving food security and nutrition. This year's report examines the diverse experiences of seven countries, with a specific focus on the enabling environment for food security and nutrition that reflects commitment and capacities across four dimensions: policies, programmes and legal frameworks; mobilization of human and financial resources; coordination mechanisms and partnerships; and evidence-based decision-making.

In 1837, the power of Daniel O'Connell's oratory focused the attention of Europeans on Ireland. They were horrified at what they saw there. The Irish poor - a third of the population - had no food except the potatoes they grew, and not enough clothing to cover themselves. They went hungry for two months of the year, and half-naked for all the year. Yet this would be their last 'good' decade before more than a million of them would vanish into unmarked graves in the 1840s. The idealistic young Baron Eotvos - a humanitarian and already a much-praised poet - struggled to understand how Ireland could have been reduced to this state under English rule, and why English journalists wrote with such bigotry about the Irish. In Hungary, he was a campaigner for the freedom of serfs, but conceded that those serfs lived in better conditions and had more protection than Irish tenants and labourers. The only protection for the Irish poor came from illegal organizations such as the Whiteboys.His visit coincided with a pivotal moment in Irish history, when debate was raging about the introduction of a 'Poor Law' (with Poor Tax to pay for it) - a charitable-sounding term for a cruel Act aimed at clearing the land of people who had no other means of survival. His deeply researched summary of the English occupation of Ireland - uninfluenced by modern revisionism - makes compelling, often harrowing reading.

The Great Irish Famine was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the nineteenth century. In a period of only five years, Ireland lost approximately 25% of its population through a combination of death and emigration. How could such a tragedy have occurred at the heart of the vast, and resource-rich, British Empire?"Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland" explores this question by focusing on a particular, and lesser-known, aspect of the Famine: that being the extent to which people throughout the world mobilized to provide money, food and clothing to assist the starving Irish. This book considers how, helped by developments in transport and communications, newspapers throughout the world reported on the suffering in Ireland, prompting funds to be raised globally on an unprecedented scale. Donations came from as far away as Australia, China, India and South America and contributors emerged from across the various religious, ethnic, social and gender divides. "Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland "traces the story of this international aid effort and uses it to reveal previously unconsidered elements in the history of the Famine in Ireland.

The Great Irish Famine was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the nineteenth century. In a period of only five years, Ireland lost approximately 25% of its population through a combination of death and emigration. How could such a tragedy have occurred at the heart of the vast, and resource-rich, British Empire? Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland explores this question by focusing on a particular, and lesser-known, aspect of the Famine: that being the extent to which people throughout the world mobilized to provide money, food and clothing to assist the starving Irish. This book considers how, helped by developments in transport and communications, newspapers throughout the world reported on the suffering in Ireland, prompting funds to be raised globally on an unprecedented scale. Donations came from as far away as Australia, China, India and South America and contributors emerged from across the various religious, ethnic, social and gender divides. Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland traces the story of this international aid effort and uses it to reveal previously unconsidered elements in the history of the Famine in Ireland.

Why do famines occur and how have their effects changed through time? Why are those who produce food so often the casualties of famines? Looking at the food crisis that struck the West African Sahel during the 1970s, Michael J. Watts examines the relationships between famine, climate, and political economy.
Through a "longue duree" history and a detailed village study Watts argues that famines are socially produced and that the market is as fickle and incalculable as the weather. Droughts are natural occurrences, matters of climatic change, but famines expose the inner workings of society, politics, and markets. His analysis moves from household and individual farming practices in the face of climatic variability to the incorporation of African peasants into the global circuits of capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial periods.
"Silent Violence" powerfully combines a case study of food crises in Africa with an analysis of the way capitalism developed in northern Nigeria and how peasants struggle to maintain rural livelihoods. As the West African Sahel confronts another food crisis and continuing food insecurity for millions of peasants, "Silent Violence" speaks in a compelling way to contemporary agrarian dynamics, food provisioning systems, and the plight of the African poor.

Food Security is a primary concern for all countries. However the vulnerabilities which need addressing are dictated by the individual country according to the food control systems in place, the nature of the food industry and the culture of the country. This book summarises the presentations of a NATO Advanced Training Course addressing the issue of food security in Central Asia. The book is divided into two sections. The first provides an overview of the existing aspects of food security in participating Central Asian countries. The emphasis here is on food safety, control and access and includes background information on the relevant food industries. Participating countries include the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The second section explores particular aspects of food security in participating NATO countries. These provide some insight into the value, strengths and weaknesses of common food security systems. Chapters cover HACCP, ISO/IEC 17025 standards and associated pre-requisite systems, allergies and food intolerances, risk perception and communication, training, and ethics. A chapter on food defence in the USA is also included. This book is suitable for anyone with an interest in food control systems and food security.

Food Security is a primary concern for all countries. However the vulnerabilities which need addressing are dictated by the individual country according to the food control systems in place, the nature of the food industry and the culture of the country. This book summarises the presentations of a NATOAdvanced Training Course addressing the issue of food security in Central Asia. The book is divided into two sections. The first provides an overview of the existing aspects of food security in participating Central Asian countries. The emphasis here is on food safety, control and access and includes background information on the relevantfood industries. Participating countries include the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The second section explores particular aspects of food security in participating NATO countries. These provide some insight into the value, strengths and weaknesses of common food security systems. Chapters cover HACCP, ISO/IEC 17025 standards and associated pre-requisite systems, allergies and food intolerances, risk perception and communication, training, and ethics. A chapter on food defence in the USA is also included. This book is suitable for anyone with an interest in food control systems and food security. "

In 1798, the Rev. T. R. Malthus published his explosive thesis arguing that population had a natural tendency to expand with the capacity of any society to feed itself. The most strident component of the Malthusian cased turned on the 'positive check' to demographic growth, a subsistence crisis generating malnutrition-induced disease and starvation, and thereby inflicting a marked drop in population. Malthus's argument was based on historical experience, but his vision was conditioned by, and conceived in, a late eighteenth-century context. Historians, while acknowledging that Tudor and Stuart precedents, and contemporary experience in continental Europe, and even in colonial Ireland, could be marshalled in support of Malthus's position at that time, have ignored any consideration of why an English country clergyman, should have developed such a pessimistic theory. English historians unthinkably, and automatically, take an implied refuge in the optimistic view that English capitalism had, through industrialisation and an agricultural revolution, achieved a 'maturity' enabling the country to escape incarceration in a 'pre-industrial' vicious circle, turning on a fragile agrarian-based economic environment. This book reverts Malthus in a thoroughly English context. It proves that famine could, and did, occur in England during the classic period of the Industrial Revolution. The key economic determinant proved to be the ideologically-inspired war, orchestrated by the Prime Minister, the younger Pitt, against the French and their attempted export of revolutionary principles at bayonet point, to the rest of Europe. This international context, in part, conditioned the recurrent development of famine conditions in England in 1794-6 and again in 1799-1801. Here the multiple ramifications of famine in this country, as it lurched from crisis to crisis in wartime, are explored in considerable depth. These were repeated crises of capitalism, juxtaposed with the autocratic and aristocratic state's total commitment to war, which contrived to challenge not just the commitment to war, but both the equilibrium and the survival of the state itself. 'WANT' stalked the land; intense rioting periodically erupted; radical politicisation, notably of unenfranchised working people, proceeded apace, in part stimulated by the catastrophic events projected on the world stage by the process of the French Revolution. The book finally explains how such an oligarchic, unrepresentative government managed through determined economic interventionism, manipulation of the unique English social security system, and final resort to army rule, to preserve itself and the political structure during a key epoch within the Age of Revolutions.

Written at a time when disasters both natural - drought, famine - and manmade - the war in Yugoslavia, civil strike in South Africa - fill our TV screens and newspapers, and when politicians are arguing over how many refugees Britain should accept, this book examines the way in which relief agencies and the media interact, and illustrates many of the organizational, moral and political problems facing them. Dr Benthall considers the different styles and "marketing techniques" of the different agencies, with particular attention paid to the power of television. There are also accounts of two modern calamities: the Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s and the Armenian earthquake of 1988.

This book describes the interdisciplinary work of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and its influence on methodological and development policies in the US. FEWS NET operational needs have driven science in biophysical remote sensing applications through its collaboration with NASA, NOAA, USGS and USDA, and socio-economic methodologies through its involvement with USAID, the United Nation's World Food Program and numerous international non-governmental organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam and others. The book describes FEWS NET's systems, methods and presents several illustrative case studies that will demonstrate the integration of physical and social science disciplines in its work.

"Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food" presents a detailed and empirically grounded analysis of alternatives to current models of food provision. The book offers insights into the identities, motives and practices of individuals engaged in reconnecting producers, consumers and food. Arguing for a critical revaluation of the meanings of choice and convenience, "Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food" provides evidence to support the construction of a more sustainable and equitable food system which is built on the relationships between people, communities and their environments.

First paperback edition with a new and updated author's introduction, and a Foreword by Douglas H. Johnson.. The conflict in Darfur had a precursor in Sudan's famines of the 1980s and 1990s. David Keen's The Benefits of Famine presented a new and startling interpretation of the causes of war-induced famine. The book is now in paperback for the first time with a new and updated introduction by the author. The Benefits of Famine gives depth to understanding the Darfur crisis. DAVID KEEN is Professor of Complex Emergencies at the DevelopmentStudies Institute, London School of Economics North America: Ohio U Press; Uganda: Fountain Publishers

In 1996, the United States and more than 180 world leaders pledged to halve the number of undernourished people globally by 2015 from the 1990 level. The global number has not decreased significantly -- remaining at about 850 million in 2001-2003 -- and the number in sub-Saharan Africa has increased from about 170 million in 1990-1992 to over 200 million in 2001-2003. On the basis of analyses of U.S. and international agency documents, structured panel discussions with experts and practitioners, and fieldwork in four African countries, the author was asked to examine (1) factors that contribute to persistent food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and (2) the extent to which host governments and donors, including the United States, are working toward halving hunger in the region by 2015.

Ever since 9/11, many have considered al Queda to be the leading threat to global security, but falling water tables in countries that contain more than half the world's people and rising temperatures worldwide pose a far more serious threat. Spreading water shortages and crop-withering heat waves are shrinking grain harvests in more and more countries, making it difficult for the world's farmers to feed 70 million more people each year. The risk is that tightening food supplies could drive up food prices, destabilizing governments in low-income grain-importing countries and disrupting global economic progress. Future security, Brown says, now depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and stabilizing population by filling the family planning gap and educating young people everywhere. If Osama bin Laden and his colleagues succeed in diverting our attention from the real threats to our future security, they may reach their goals for reasons that even they have not imagined.