How does drought cause famine

The story of our future starts with you. Want us to keep you updated by text message? Provide us with your mobile phone number. Famine is a widespread scarcity of food and can cause severe effects on global communities. Learn more about what famine is and what Oxfam is doing to prevent it. As country after country has required people to stay at home and economies grind to a halt, the specter of hunger is emerging.

The economic crisis and disruption of the food supply could push an additional half billion people into poverty , according to estimates by Oxfam and others. Is a global famine really a possibility? Phases are not very nice situations either, by the way, and as you can see in graphic below, when people get to the famine stage, they typically have few or no resources to sustain them.

Famine looks like a lack of food, and most people think it is brought on by a drought, a war, or an outbreak of disease. But famines are usually caused by multiple factors, compounded by poor or even intentionally bad policy decisions that make people vulnerable.

When no one addresses this vulnerability, it leads to famine. Unfortunately there are still some cases of conflict that have plunged millions into poverty and hunger, making people even more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Conflict and a lengthy, serious drought in Somalia and other parts of the Horn of Africa has killed off most of the crops and livestock, the main assets for many families. The situation in the Horn is compounded by climate change and now an upsurge in desert locusts across East Africa.

The conflict in Yemen is has been going on for six years now. Aid groups such as Oxfam and UN agencies including the Famine Early Warning System have been warning the world about this deteriorating situation for some time. Oxfam is actively working to reduce the likelihood of famine and end world hunger.

Here are some ways we are getting involved:. Clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing hands is essential in any humanitarian emergency to avoid deadly water-borne diseases such as cholera or coronavirus. But any stomach ailment from dirty water will rob people of the nutrition they can derive from whatever food they can find. Children under 5 are particularly vulnerable.

For example, in a dry year, meteorological drought may lead to hydrological drought in a stream, when the stream runs much lower than it usually does. Likewise, hydrological drought may exist when the source of a stream is blocked or severed. Agricultural drought occurs when there is a significant reduction in crop yield, such that it may fall to a certain level considered to be a drought.

Where there is insufficient water to produce a staple crop, for example, or where there is insufficient fertilizer to produce the standard yield for a crop, drought may lead to and certainly cause famine. Yet, it is not necessarily the drought that causes such a famine.

For famine to occur, there must be insufficient availability of or access to food. Though there may be some kind of drought one year, adequate food management of the available crops may effectively prevent famine. This point highlights the importance of access to food. After a shortage of rain, however, the Nile didn't rise. People were unable to grow food and began to starve to death. The final death toll was ,, due to starvation, cannibalism, and disease.

Where: Ireland When: Potatoes were the mainstay of the Irish diet. When the crop was struck by a potato blight a fungus that killed the crop , farmers and their families began to starve. The grain and livestock raised in Ireland were owned by the English, and the laws of the time prevented the Irish people from importing grain to eat.

This combination of plant disease and politics resulted in the Great Potato Famine, which killed 1. Where: The Great Plains of the U. When: s The U. Peak periods were , , , , and