In a previous blog, I wrote about the impact of climate change on agriculture and food security because it gives rise to severe storms, flooding and drought. These events destroy crops leading to famine. Other factors contributing to famine include war, poverty, disease, sky high food prices, and economic collapse. In this blog, I'm going to discuss government policies and mismanagement that can lead to or worsen famine.

Let's look at some historical examples.

Irish Great Famine (1845-51)

Phytophthora infestans, a fungus that causes a rapid decay of potato plants, invaded Ireland in the summer of 1845 after infecting plants in the U.S., Flanders, Holland, Normandy, and southern England. The fungus spread rapidly destroying Irish potato crops. No other European country relied as much on the potato for food as Ireland.

Tragically, the crisis was made worse by the British government's policies. Despite the many poverty-stricken people who were starving, the British government required that Ireland continue to export large quantities of food to Great Britain. Parliament was aware of the worsening situation, and in 1846, it repealed tariffs on grain, known as the Corn Laws, to reduce the price of bread for the poor. But this effort was unpopular with the Conservative Party, forcing the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, to resign. The new Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, appointed Sir Charles Trevelyan to head the relief effort. Trevelyan believed that the famine was "sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson…The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."

Parliament decided that the Irish landowners should be responsible for famine relief. In response, the landowners evicted the tenant farmers from their land to save money. Around 1 million people died during the Great Famine from starvation and disease.

Indian Great Madras Famine (1876-1878)

Extreme climate conditions from 1870 to 1878 led to concurrent multiyear droughts in Africa, Asia, and Brazil. Crop failures leading to famine killed over 50 million people globally. The devastation was made worse in Colonial India because of British policies. While over 8 million people were starving to death during India's Madras famine, the British demanded that massive amounts of grain be exported from India to England. (Sound familiar?)

Severe drought caused crop failures. Prices of grain skyrocketed. The poor couldn't afford the food. Food shortages led to malnutrition, starvation, and disease such as cholera and malaria.

Worsening the situation, many farmers were growing cash crops such as cotton and indigo to export to Great Britain instead of food and feed crops for the Indian public and their animals. Peasant farmers were in debt from British land taxes. Humans weren't the only casualties because countless numbers of livestock died during the famine too.

Poor leadership worsened the crisis.

Viceroy Lord Robert Bulwer Lytton decided to not interfere with the free trade of private commercial enterprises. His belief in Social Darwinism might have contributed to his lack of concern regarding the widespread suffering and death of the Indian peasants. He wrote, "I am confident that more food, whether from abroad or elsewhere, will reach Madras, if we leave private enterprise to itself, than if we paralyze it by Government competition."

Eventually, the British colonial government opened relief kitchens, but they were instructed to distribute only small amounts of food to the poor to reduce any "dependency" on the handouts. As the victims starved, many including women and children, were told to work if they wanted to eat. They received lower rations than the men, many of whom were forced to work on colonial railway projects to receive wages for food.

The inhumane British policies outraged many around the world. Regardless of the suffering, more than 200 million pounds of rice were exported to Britain, and British Colonial rule over India continued for many decades.

Ukrainian Holodomor Famine (1930-33)

In the 1920s, the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Josef Stalin, sought to cease Ukraine's bid for independence by arresting thousands of Ukrainians. By 1922, Ukraine became incorporated into the Soviet Union.

In 1931, the USSR confiscated Ukrainian land and forced the farmers to work on newly established Communist collective farms. Those who resisted were arrested and deported. The Soviets demanded that the Ukrainian farmers meet impossibly high quotas for export to the USSR. Those who couldn't meet the quotas were mandated to provide other foodstuffs such as potatoes and meat. Making the situation worse, the Kremlin passed a law making the theft of a few stalks of grain for food punishable by death. While millions of Ukrainians starved, the Soviets sold their grain abroad.

The famine worsened.

Stalin was informed of the increasingly dire situation in Ukraine. His response was devastating. He wanted more draconian laws to collect more grain. He sent teams to Ukraine to collect all the food they could find. Further, he implemented a campaign of persecution of Ukrainians who resisted his policies. Approximately 4 million people perished.

In 1953, at a United Nations Genocide Convention, Raphael Lemkin, a legal scholar of international criminal law, with an interest in the prevention of mass human extermination, called Stalin's policies, "a classic example of Soviet genocide."

Chinese Cultural Revolution Famine (1958-62)

Chairman Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" to create a Communist paradise in China resulted in the death of an estimated 30 to 45 million people. It was the largest famine in recorded history and was entirely due to disastrous policies which were meant to transform China from an agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse. Unfortunately, nobody spoke with the agricultural experts before implementing Mao's untested methodologies.

From a One Health perspective, a particularly egregious policy was killing sparrows because Mao believed that they ate grain, and he wanted to boost grain production. He believed that nature should be subservient to humanity.

Mao's war against nature, called the Four Pests campaign, involved killing flies, mosquitoes, rats, and sparrows. Millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of sparrows were killed. The big winners were locusts because the sparrows weren't around to eat them.

Mao had inadvertently created an ecological experiment demonstrating the critical role that intact ecosystems play in agriculture, food, and health. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. Other factors that contributed to the catastrophe included misuse of pesticides and poisons, widespread deforestation, and poor weather.

Nigerian Biafran War Famine (1967-70)

A civil war in Nigeria broke out when the Southeastern part of the country seceded to create its own republic called Biafra. In response, the Nigerian Federal Military Government (FMG) blocked the renegade region by air, land, and sea. This blockade of the besieged region led to an estimated 2 million people dying from starvation and disease.

The United Nations and the Organization of African Unity implemented a non-interference policy to avoid breaching Nigerian sovereignty. The Nigerian Biafran famine tested the international humanitarian system. Non-government organizations (NGOs) such as the International Red Cross were seen as failures. The Nigerian Biafran war and famine served as the catalyst for the creation of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1971 to provide emergency aid quickly without government interference.

Ethiopian Famine (1983-85)

After overthrowing Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Lieutenant-Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam controlled Ethiopia as a Communist state and nationalized industry and agriculture. In 1983, a severe drought developed, particularly in the northern parts of the country, but government policies contributed to the ensuing famine. These policies included a forced resettlement program that moved people from the rebel-controlled north to the government-controlled south which worsened historical grievances between different armed groups, such as the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, leading to increased violence.

Counter-insurgency strategies included destroying food stores, crops, and livestock. The government used the famine as a strategy to fight the secessionist movements. Between 600,000 and 1 million people died. While drought played a role, government policies were the primary contributing factor.

Gaza Humanitarian Crisis and Famine (2025-ongoing)

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel killing 1,200 people. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Israeli history. Hamas also abducted around 250 hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, decided to use the Scorched Earth military strategy of retaliation against Hamas as a way to eliminate them from the Gaza Strip.

Unfortunately, Hamas has a strategy of using civilian Palestinians as human shields, which forces Israel to attack residential and commercial areas. Hamas' strategy has successfully undermined Netanyahu's retaliation by winning global public opinion.

On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for using starvation as a method of warfare and for targeting attacks against the civilian Palestinian population.

As of May 2025, the World Food Programme determined that food is scarce, hunger and malnutrition are rampant, and the Gaza Strip is at risk of famine. Children are dying from starvation. As of this writing, Hamas continues to hold 50 hostages, and Netanyahu continues to breach international law by limiting humanitarian aid into Gaza. The crisis continues.

Trump Administration Policies

Climate Policies

The Trump administration's goals seem to be to rescind as many of the US's climate change adaptation and mitigation policies as possible. President Trump's policies reflect the goals of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.

The policies include downsizing and breaking up the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (NOAA), eliminating the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, eliminating policies to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, expand fossil fuel exploration and extraction in Alaska, and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, among others.

Gaps in weather prediction capabilities are hurting farmers' abilities to plan for the future. Unpredictable weather and excessive rainfall adversely affect productivity. Farmers are losing confidence that they can continue farming in an era of climate change, and many are going bankrupt.

Climate change is anticipated to have a deleterious impact on crop yields and livestock productivity which will adversely affect food security.

Agriculture

President Trump's sweeping tariffs on imported goods are disrupting global markets and hurting farmers. While some farmers are upset by these policies, many support them and think that they will help their industry in the long term. The tariffs appear to be having a deleterious effect on US exports of corn, pork, and soybeans to China and other countries resulting in billions of dollars in losses. The rate of farms going bankrupt in 2025 are exceeding 2024 rates.

Meanwhile, food prices in the US continue to rise. (They're rising worldwide, too).

President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill subsidizes corn and soybean producers while cutting food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help the poor. Hunger in the US has been rising, and the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts will worsen the situation. Already, nearly 20 percent of children across the US are going hungry, and in some rural areas, that rate rises to 50 percent.

Immigration and Migrant Farm Workers

According to the Trump administration, the previous administration allowed millions of illegal immigrants into the US, which presented significant threats to national security and public safety. These illegal immigrants commit "vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans."

To address these hardline anti-immigrant beliefs, the Trump administration has implemented draconian policies that are raising concerns of human rights violations. Among those most affected are undocumented migrant farm workers who are being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. They feel like they're being "hunted like animals," and many have gone into hiding. This could have an enormous impact on the availability and affordability of food since approximately 40 percent of farm workers in the US are estimated to be undocumented. On July 10, 2025, a chaotic ICE raid caused a 57 year old farm worker to die after falling off a greenhouse roof. In response, the farm workers have called for a three-day strike, demanding an end to ICE raids, deportations, and permanent protections to live in the US.

Disease

According to the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza is continuing to cause outbreaks in domestic poultry and dairy cattle. However, detailed surveillance information is limited in flocks and herds on the APHIS website now.

On June 26, 2025, Brooke L. Rollins, the US Secretary of Agriculture, announced that the wholesale price of eggs dropped 64 percent and retail prices fell 27 percent from an earlier peak in the year. "When President Trump entered office, the cost of eggs was at a record high, seriously denting consumers' wallets after years of awful inflation."

According to Trading Economics, an independent website that provides data and analysis of economic indicators for 196 countries, the price of white large eggs reached a peak of approximately $8.00/dozen in March 2025, fell rapidly, and as of July 2025, is at $3.19/dozen. The large drop in prices has been attributed to a decline in avian flu cases as well as a reduction in consumer demand.

Of course, besides avian influenza, there are many other crop and livestock diseases that threaten food security.

Conclusions

Famines from the 19th and 20th centuries were not completely due to natural disasters such as drought. Government policies often made the situations worse. However, in some cases, the famines were completely due to misguided or deliberate government policies.

In affluent countries, such as the US, modern agriculture has produced enough food to keep most of the population well fed. Almost a decade ago, Americans spent the lowest percentage of their income on food than any other country.

But over the past few years, since the Covid-19 pandemic, food prices have risen. The percentage of Americans who are food insecure has been rising.

Extreme income inequality, climate change, and disease, have also caused many American households to spend more of their after-tax incomes on food. President Trump's tariffs, climate change, and draconian immigration policies might make the situation much worse.