Can You Even Survive a Global Famine?

When severe drought hit ancient Egypt or medieval India, it was not uncommon that 5 or 10 per cent of the population perished.

Can one live on that? And yet, around the world, in 2005, 865 million people (13 percent of the world’s population) did.

At least in terms of food availability, today we live in a world that is capable of feeding every person that lives on the planet.

most recent famines have been caused not by lack of food availability but by institutional failures that led to poor distribution of the available food, or even hoarding and storage in the face of starvation elsewhere.