[John H K]

Going back hundreds of years, it's almost impossible to find a famine where the PRIMARY cause was overpopulation, drought, or crop disease.

Almost all famines are caused by 1 of 3 things:

1)Incompetent government policies (Great Britain and the Irish Potato Famine as one example)

2) Deliberate government starvation of parts of the population (Soviet Union and the Ukraine)

3) War and/or anarchy meaning it isn't safe to plant or harvest crops and whatever is harvested is stolen (Afghanistan, Somalia.)

[Balding_Eagle]

Good summary.