Farming And Famine

This book is situated at the cross-roads of environmental, agricultural and economic history and climate science. It investigates the climatic background for the two most significant risk factors for life in the crisis-prone England of the Later Middle Ages: subsistence crisis and plague. Based on documentary data from eastern England, the late medieval growing season temperature is reconstructed and the late summer precipitation of that period indexed. Using these data, and drawing together various other regional (proxy) data and a wide variety of contemporary documentary sources, the impact of climatic variability and extremes on agriculture, society and health are assessed. Vulnerability and resilience changed over time: before the population loss in the Great Pestilence in the mid-fourteenth century meteorological factors contributing to subsistence crises were the main threat to the English people, after the arrival of Yersinia pestis it was the weather conditions that faciliated the formation of recurrent major plague outbreaks. Agriculture and harvest success in late medieval England were inextricably linked to both short term weather extremes and longer term climatic fluctuations. In this respect the climatic transition period in the Late Middle Ages (c. 1250-1450) is particularly important since the broadly favourable conditions for grain cultivation during the Medieval Climate Optimum gave way to the Little Ice Age, when agriculture was faced with many more challenges; the fourteenth century in particular was marked by high levels of climatic variability.

Historians and scholars of Ethiopia have long struggled to understand the "Ethiopian Paradox": that is, how could Africa's most productive food production system, which sustained an extraordinary imperial culture over two millennia, also be home to periodic, gut-wrenching famine and rural poverty? Ethiopia in the late twentieth century has surpassed earlier icons of famine: China, India, Armenia, and Biafra. And yet, ironically, Ethiopia's highland culture also generated, and eventually exported, the iconic cuisine served in Ethiopian restaurants throughout the developed world, and in large cities in Africa itself. Donald Crummey argues that in the face of increasing environmental stress, Ethiopian farmers have innovated and adapted. In the process they have developed effective strategies for managing their environment--strategies too often ignored by conservation projects.

Outlines practical solutions to global food supply problems in the twenty-first century, suggesting relevant ways to address key issues related to food safety, conservation, global trade, and more. Original.

This book examines the Soviet agricultural crisis of 1931-1933 which culminated in the major famine of 1933. It is the first volume in English to make extensive use of Russian and Ukrainian central and local archives to assess the extent and causes of the famine. It reaches new conclusions on how far the famine was 'organized' or 'artificial', and compares it with other Russian and Soviet famines and with major twentieth century famines elsewhere. Against this background, it discusses the emergence of collective farming as an economic and social system.

The Irish Famine saw hapless Irish citizens starve to death and die of disease, while the population of a neighbouring country, England, lived in relative bounty and apparent disinterest. After the Famine investigates the subsequent emigration of many surviving Irish to Eastern Ontario and tells the story of how, despite hardships, the Irish in Canada managed to survive and prosper after fleeing tragedy. The author explains how the Irish adapted to their new land, and how we might account for their triumph as farmers under somewhat less than favourable environmental conditions. Examining their successful farming life in rural Ontario through their agricultural performance, changing family structures, and farming adaptations, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the fate of the Irish after their greatest calamity.

In The Coming Famine, Julian Cribb lays out a vivid picture of impending planetary crisis--a global food shortage that threatens to hit by mid-century--that would dwarf any in our previous experience. Cribb's comprehensive assessment describes a dangerous confluence of shortages--of water, land, energy, technology, and knowledge--combined with the increased demand created by population and economic growth. Writing in brisk, accessible prose, Cribb explains how the food system interacts with the environment and with armed conflict, poverty, and other societal factors. He shows how high food prices and regional shortages are already sending shockwaves into the international community. But, far from outlining a doomsday scenario, The Coming Famine offers a strong and positive call to action, exploring the greatest issue of our age and providing practical suggestions for addressing each of the major challenges it raises.

Some urgent new thinking is needed if any lessons are to be learnt from the recent disasters. This book brings together the experience of a number of writers who have worked on, or studied, poverty alleviation programmes in Asia and Africa.

In this controversial study, Seavoy offers a new approach to the problem of periodic peacetime famine based on the actual behavior of peasants. He maintains that it is possible to increase per capita food production without massive and inappropriate technological inputs. Seavoy shifts the focus from modern development economics to a cultural and historical analysis of subsistence agriculture in Western Europe (England and Ireland), Indonesia, and India. From his survey of peasant civilization practices in these countries, he generalizes on the social values that create what he terms the subsistence compromise. In all of the ages and culture, Seavoy finds a consistent social organization of agriculture that produces identical results: seasonal hunger in poor crop years and famine conditions in consecutive poor crop years. He argues that economic policies have failed to increase per capita food production because economists and government planners try to apply market-oriented policies to populations that are not commercially motivated. Once they understand the subsistence compromise, policy-makers can take appropriate political action.