Before entering fully into the meaning of the term famine, we must know its etymological origin. In this case, it is considered to derive from the expression “dog hunger.” Starting from that, we must know the origin of those two words that give it shape:
-Hunger, first of all, emanates from Latin. Exactly what he does from the term “famen, faminis”.
-Perruna, secondly, also derives from Latin. Specifically, it is the result of the sum of the term dog plus the suffix “-una”.
The concept of hunger has several meanings. When the term is used to refer to the general lack of food , its synonym famine can also be used.
Famine, therefore, is a general shortage of food . In other words: famine occurs in a region when the amount of food available is not enough to satisfy the nutritional needs of the population, a situation that causes malnutrition and an increase in mortality due to hunger.
Famines can be caused by mass poverty , wars or natural disasters . This is the most advanced stage of food scarcity, when the majority of inhabitants do not have access to food.
Throughout history there have been numerous famines. The Great Irish Famine , for example, is known as a period that occurred between 1845 and 1849 in Ireland , characterized by deaths from starvation and diseases linked to nutrient deficiency.
The Great Irish Famine was caused by a plague that affected potato crops, vital for feeding a large part of the population. The crops that were lost led to famine that caused the death of a million people and the emigration, faced with the desolate panorama, of another million. That is why it is estimated that the Great Irish Famine reduced the nation's population by 25% .
In the same way, we must not overlook what was known as the great Chinese famine or Three Years of Natural Disasters. These names refer to a period, between 1959 and 1961, in which China experienced a widespread famine that led to the death of five million people.
In Ethiopia , meanwhile, a famine occurred in the early 1980s caused by an enormous drought and the consequences of other previous environmental problems that had already caused thousands of deaths. It is estimated that, due to the famine of the '80s , one million Ethiopians died and hundreds of thousands left the country.
In the field of culture we find works that use the word in question in their titles. A good example of this is the book “Red Famine: Stalin's War against Ukraine.” The writer Anne Applebaum, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of this work that comes to tell in depth a real event that occurred in the 1930s.
Specifically, it explains that certain political measures carried out by Stalin brought with them an unprecedented famine that caused the death of five million people in the USSR , of which three million were of Ukrainian origin.