
"Famine is a crisis of mass hunger that causes
many people to die over a specific period of time.
Achieving a standard definition of famine, let alone
an operational categorization of different kinds and
severities of food crisis, is extraordinarily complicated.
The necessary elements of famine are hunger, crisis and increased mortality.
It involves hunger and starvation, disruption and disease, and social breakdown.
Famine is a social, economic and political phenomenon as well as a nutritional one.
Famines can occur without a food shortage or without mass outright starvation unto death."
Alex de Waal – Mass starvation – The history and future of famine