FAMINES

And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

—Luke 21:11

1570 Causes of Famine

The causes of famines are many:

It usually follows war. The greater the war, the greater the subsequent famine. As a result of World War I and the revolutions which followed, 27 million people starved to death. Moreover, during conditions of hostilities, farmers are universally reluctant to plant and labor, only to see marauding armies take away their crops. Uncontrolled human reproduction also leads to famine. The population of the world is growing at the rate of 2% a year, but the food supply is growing at a rate of only 1% a year. The president of Pakistan predicted that within a decade, “human beings will be eating human beings in Pakistan.”

Famines also arise from natural causes such as droughts, excessive rains or floods, exceptionally cold weather, typhoons and freakish storms, tidal waves, and other natural calamities.

Vermins, such as insects and plant diseases diminish food resources. At the 143rd annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, it was revealed that “35% of the world’s food was being lost to insects, weeds and animals prior to harvest and an additional 10–12% was being destroyed by pests after reaping and storage.” It was noted that despite efforts to produce more food, global agriculture was virtually at a standstill.

1571 History’s Big Famines

Among the great famines of history, the following may be picked out:

India (650 AD)

England (1005)

Mexico (1051)

Egypt (1064–1072)

India (1344–1345)

England (1586)

Japan (1732–33)

Bengal (1769–1770)—one-third of population died

India (1790–1792)—the numbers who died were too great for burial

Japan (1832–1836)

Ireland (1845–1849)

Persia (1871)

Asia Minor (1871–1874)

India (1876–78)

Brazil (1877)

North China (1877–78)

Morocco (1876–78)

Russia (1891–92)

India (1899–1901)

Russia (1905)

China (1916)

Russia (1921)

Russia (1932–33)

1572 Even Horse Manure

A peasant described the famine in Russia in 1932–33 as follows: “We’ve eaten everything we could lay our hands on—cats, dogs, field-mice, birds. When it’s light tomorrow you will see the trees stripped of their bark … And the horse manure has been eaten. Sometimes there are whole grains in it.”

1573 Food Problem Explosion

The food problem has exploded during the last 20 years. The developing countries, virtually non-importers of food in 1950, were importing between 25 and 30 million tons of grain in the late 1960s.

By 1975, the net imports had reached more than 50 million tons per year. Every projection of the situation points to a doubling or tripling of these cereals’ deficits by 1985.

By 1985, it may be impossible to tackle this huge deficit even by enormously increasing food imports and food aid.

1574 Thirty A Minute

Dr. D. L. Umali, Assistant Director-General of United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization reported that “about 460 million people are at the brink of starvation daily, some 200 million children slip into some form of mental retardation and blindness due to lack of food, another 10 million or so give way finally to hunger-related diseases.”

The World Health Organization estimated that approximately one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving. Four million people a year die of starvation and 70% of children under 6 are undernourished. Thus, 30 persons die of starvation every minute.

Scientists are learning how to make frogs, worms and termites into food that will taste like chicken or pork. Cereal manufacturers are using soybeans to make food that taste like chicken, bacon and beef.

1575 Legend Of Wheat

Once I chanced upon a sculptured panel of stone in the Athens Archaeological Museum.

It depicted a woman presenting a grain of wheat to a little boy. Grecian mythology has it that Demeter the earth Mother had a daughter Kore who had been carried off by Pluto, god of the underworld, to be his bride, and in desperate search for her daughter, the legend said, Demeter was hospitably received by the King of Eleusis.

Finally Zeus, the chief god, forced a compromise by which Kore stayed in the underworld for six months and returned to earth to her mother for the remaining six months of the year. Hence winter and summer were the reflection of the Earth Mother’s grief and withdrawal, bounty and joy.

According to the legend, when Demeter left the king’s house, in return for the hospitality she had received she gave to the little prince Triptolemos a grain of wheat. This is how corn came to man, and since Demeter was also called Ceres, we perpetuate the old story whenever we eat “cereals.”

—Selected

1576 Newlyweds’ Rice Showering Stopped

Roman Catholic archbishop Jaime L. Sin of Manila has issued a simple reminder: rice is a basic food, and there is not enough of it to go around, so why waste rice by showering it on newlyweds? Foregoing the custom would not save much rice but it would help a little in consciousness-raising. Unless the well-fed get under the burden of the fact that millions are starving, little improvement in the food problem can be expected.

—Christianity Today

1577 Church “Starvation” Banquet

A Canadian church held a “starvation banquet” to help members better understand the plight of the world’s hungry. Each person attending the “banquet” ate only a half cup of chicken noodle soup, a half slice of bread without butter, and a cup of tea without sugar or milk and nothing else between breakfast and supper. They took an offering for missions, using empty rice sacks as collection plates.

1578 Weekly Rice Lunch Savings

At Cornell University, a once-a-week rice lunch on the part of committed Christians saved US $12,000 over the semester. The money was used for Africa famine relief through an agency of the United Nations.

1579 Asian Red Crabs

Los Angeles (AP)—Asian red crabs might be the answer to the world’s food problems if it weren’t for a problem of cannibalism, American television actor Ted Hartley believes.

Mother crab has about 1.5 million babies, but she eats all but three or four. Shortly thereafter, the father crab eats the mother.

Hartley has imported meaty Asian reds from Indonesia.

He is seeking ways to help more baby crabs live longer. Within a couple of years, Hartley thinks he can come up with a crab-growing system that will cut supermarket prices to 50 cents a pound.

1580 LaGuardia Paying The Fine

Once, when Mr. LaGuardia, the famous ex-mayor of New York, was presiding at a police court, they brought a trembling old man before him charged with stealing a loaf of bread. He said his family was starving. “Well, I’ve got to punish you,” said Mr. LaGuardia. “The law makes no exception, and I can do nothing but sentence you to a fine of ten dollars.” Then he added, after reaching into his pocket, “and here’s the ten dollars to pay your fine. And now I remit the fine.” Then, tossing the ten-dollar bill into his famous oversized hat, he said, “Furthermore, I m going to fine everybody in this courtroom fifty cents, for living in a town where a man has to steal bread in order to eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines, and give them to this defendant.” The hat was passed, and an incredulous old man, with a light of Heaven in his eyes, left the courtroom with forty-seven dollars and fifty cents.

—Methodist Recorder

1581 Numbering India’s Sacred Cows

A letter to the editor of Time reads: Sir: I wonder if Time’s division of imaginary numbers could provide me with the latest count on the number of sacred cows in India. The last time I checked, a few years ago, sacred cow population estimates were readily available—give or take 234 million. They ranged from a high of 500 million in Commonweal, through a New York Times Magazine count of 240 million to a Manchester Guardian editorial determination of 176 million.

Bud Johnson

Milwaukee

Time’s Answer: It is safe to say that estimates cited by Reader Johnson average out to 305 million. The D.I.N.’s sacred-cow specialist could be no more precise than that.

1582 India’s Holy Rats

A United Press International release: The revered rodents, which outnumber India’s 600 million people by nearly five to one, are capitalizing on the Hindu belief in the sanctity of animal life.

While India fights famines in many of the impoverished states, rats have been quietly gnawing their way into granaries and emerging with full stomachs.

According to the Indian Institute of Socio-Economic Studies, there are more than 2.5 billion rats in India. Scientists and statisticians believe the losses from rats in the country exceed $240 million a year.

In India, all rats are considered holy since the Hindu mythology holds that they are the “divine mounts” of prosperity.

In the heart of the west Indian desert state of Rajasthan, an ancient temple, Deshnouk, is dedicated to rats. Here, more than 25,000 rupees or $3,300 worth of precious food grains are annually fed to sacred rats.

Not only do the holy rats of Deshnouk temple have a good deal, but the temple coffers continue to fill up too. Any pilgrim who happens to accidentally trample a rat to his death has to pay a fine. The fine: the gift of a golden statue of the dead rodent costing the rupee equivalent of some $450.

1583 Going To The Rats

For every one of India’s 600 million people there are five rats and according to the Hindu religion, they are sacred. Scientists and statisticians have estimated that the country loses $740 million a year to the rats, an annual loss of grains of more than 1.25 million tons!

1584 Survival Limit Without Food

The American Medical Association explains that the time a human can live without food depends mainly on physical condition and the amount of fat stored in the body. But the A.M.A. thinks no one can live for more than nine to ten weeks without food.

1585 Creation’s Need For Food

Prof. J. A. Carlson, in Your Body, speaks of hunger. A bird can go nine days without food. A man twelve days. A dog twenty days. A turtle five hundred days. A snake eight hundred days. A fish one thousand days. Insects twelve hundred days. Food is necessary for all God’s creature.

1586 Water Prolongs Fast

A man lying quietly in a cool room could live at most 12 days without water, but given water he could fast for more than two months.

1587 Man’s Survival Limits

Man can live about 40 days without food, about 3 days without water, about 8 minutes without air.

1588 Deaths From Hunger Strikes

Sixty-nine days is the record set by Terence MacSwinery, Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, who went on a hunger strike and starved himself to death in prison in 1920.

The shortest survival was probably that of Sarah Jacobs of Wales, who paradoxically, was famous for her alleged ability to fast. In 1869, after she and her parents had sworn, before many vast audiences, that no food had passed her lips for more than two years, the little impostor was placed, by the authorities, under the surveillance of professional nurses and died of starvation in nine days. Consequently, her mother and father were convicted of fraud and given prison sentences.

—Selected

See also: Eating and Drinking ; Matt. 24:7; Mark 13:8; Rev. 6:5–8.