6 - Famines

Summary

Description: The past experienced major pandemics and famines. For a long time, the growth of the population was controlled by a somewhat rigid version of the Malthusian Theory, by lack of food. In the past two centuries, that theory played less of a role than it had in the distant past because of the Industrial Revolution and more arable lands in Argentina, Australia, and the USA. <break>However, in the past two centuries there were occasional crop failures, in India and in China, which at times sharply reduced the supply of food, causing major famines. Some of these famines killed millions of people. Epidemics and pandemics also continued to have some impact and occasionally they accompanied the famines, making their impact worse. Human actions had a growing impact on these developments.