Famine scales
Encyclopedia
Famine scales are the ways in which degrees of food security
are measured, from situations in which an entire population has adequate food to full-scale famine
. The word "famine" has highly emotive and political connotations and there has been extensive discussion among international relief agencies offering food aid as to its exact definition. For example, in 1998, although a full-scale famine
had developed in southern Sudan, a disproportionate amount of donor food resources went to the Kosovo War
. This ambiguity about whether or not a famine is occurring, and the lack of commonly agreed upon criteria by which to differentiate food insecurity has prompted renewed interest in offering precise definitions. As different levels of food insecurity demand different types of response, there have been various methods of famine measurement proposed to help agencies determine the appropriate response.
One of the earliest methods of measurement was the Indian Famine Codes
developed by the colonial British
in the 1880s. The Famine Codes defined three levels of food insecurity: near-scarcity, scarcity, and famine. "Scarcity" was defined as three successive years of crop failure, crop yields of one-third or one-half normal, and large populations in distress. "Famine" further included a rise in food
prices above 140% of "normal", the movement of people in search of food, and widespread mortality. The Punjab Food Code stated, "Imminence of death is the sole criterion for declaration of famine." Inherent in the Famine Codes was the assumption that famine was an event, and not a process.
The basic premise of the Famine Codes formed the basis of numerous subsequent early warning systems. One of the most efficacious is the Turkana District
Early Warning System in northern Kenya
in which indicators include rainfall levels, market price
s of cereal
s, status of livestock
, rangeland
conditions and trends, and enrollment on food-for-work projects. The system identifies three levels of crisis: alarm, alert and emergency, each of which is linked to a pre-planned response to mitigate the crisis and try to prevent a worsening of the situation.
International organizations responding to recent food crises created ad-hoc measurements. In 2002, the World Food Programme
created a number of "pre-famine indicators" for Ethiopia
and combined it with measurements of nutrition
levels to create recommendations. The Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU) devised a system for Somalia
with four levels: Non-alert (near normal), Alert (requires close attention), Livelihood Crisis (basic social structures under threat) and Humanitarian Emergency (threat of widespread mortality requiring immediate humanitarian assistance).
Previously famines had been perceived as a threat to individuals, even large numbers of individuals. Inherent in the livelihoods strategies outlook is the conception of famine as a social problem. Populations affected by increased food stress will try to cope through market structures (i.e. selling possessions for food) and reliance upon community and family support structures. It is only when such social structures collapse under the strain that individuals are faced with the malnutrition and starvation that has commonly been viewed as "famine".
During the 1980s and 1990s, studies of the process by which populations adapted to food stress as food security worsened received much attention. Four stages of the process were identified:
benchmarks have been proposed as the cut-off points for food insecurity levels. The United Nations
Refugee Nutrition Information System lists a number of such indicator cutoff points:
The use of these cut-offs is contentious. Some argue that a crude mortality rate of one death per ten thousand people per day is already a full-scale emergency. Others note that while most indicators are focused on children, parents will often reduce their own food consumption in favor of their children. Child malnutrition may thus be a trailing indicator, indicating non-emergency levels even after adult malnutrition has reached crisis levels. It has also been noted that malnutrition is often not directly related to food availability; malnutrition is often the result of disease or poor child-care practices, even with adequate food availability.
at the University of Sussex
, set forth a measurement of famine with scales for both "intensity" and "magnitude", incorporating many of the developments of recent decades. The intensity scale is:
On the magnitude scale:
Using this framework, each famine would receive a Magnitude designation, but locations within the affected region would be classified at varying Intensities. The 1998 southern Sudan famine
would be a C: Major Famine, with an intensity of 5: Extreme famine in Ajiep village ranging to 3: Famine in Rumbek
town. In comparison, the 2000 Ethiopian famine in Gode
district would be classified as a B: Moderate famine, and would thus should demand proportionally less of the limited resources available for famine relief.
While each organization working in famine-related areas has its own operational interpretation of specific indicators, the Howe-Devereaux framework has been widely adopted as a common framework by which famine warning and famine relief may be discussed worldwide, in particular in the use of the intensity scale. This has led organizations such as the World Food Programme to refrain from referring to the 2005 Niger food crisis as a famine, as indicators had not deteriorated into a Level 3: Famine.
Food security
Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past...
are measured, from situations in which an entire population has adequate food to full-scale famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
. The word "famine" has highly emotive and political connotations and there has been extensive discussion among international relief agencies offering food aid as to its exact definition. For example, in 1998, although a full-scale famine
1998 Sudan famine
The famine in Sudan in 1998 was a humanitarian disaster caused mainly by human rights abuses, as well as drought and the failure of the international community to react to the famine risk with adequate speed. The worst affected area was Bahr El Ghazal in southwestern Sudan...
had developed in southern Sudan, a disproportionate amount of donor food resources went to the Kosovo War
Kosovo War
The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...
. This ambiguity about whether or not a famine is occurring, and the lack of commonly agreed upon criteria by which to differentiate food insecurity has prompted renewed interest in offering precise definitions. As different levels of food insecurity demand different types of response, there have been various methods of famine measurement proposed to help agencies determine the appropriate response.
Measurement methods
A tension that has existed in all attempts to define a famine is between definitions of famine as an event and definitions as a process. In the first case, famine is defined (roughly) as the event of many people dying of starvation within a locality or region. In the second, famine is described as a chronology beginning with a disruption or disruptions that gradually leads to widespread death. However, these general definitions have little utility for those implementing food relief as "region", "widespread", etc. are undefined.One of the earliest methods of measurement was the Indian Famine Codes
Indian Famine Codes
The Indian Famine Codes, developed by the colonial British in the 1880s, were one of the earliest famine scales. The Famine Codes defined three levels of food insecurity: near-scarcity, scarcity, and famine. "Scarcity" was defined as three successive years of crop failure, crop yields of one-third...
developed by the colonial British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in the 1880s. The Famine Codes defined three levels of food insecurity: near-scarcity, scarcity, and famine. "Scarcity" was defined as three successive years of crop failure, crop yields of one-third or one-half normal, and large populations in distress. "Famine" further included a rise in food
Food
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...
prices above 140% of "normal", the movement of people in search of food, and widespread mortality. The Punjab Food Code stated, "Imminence of death is the sole criterion for declaration of famine." Inherent in the Famine Codes was the assumption that famine was an event, and not a process.
The basic premise of the Famine Codes formed the basis of numerous subsequent early warning systems. One of the most efficacious is the Turkana District
Turkana District
Turkana District is an administrative district in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. Turkana is the northwesternmost district in Kenya. It is bordered by the countries of Uganda to the west; South Sudan and Ethiopia, including the disputed Ilemi Triangle, to the north and northeast; and Lake...
Early Warning System in northern Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
in which indicators include rainfall levels, market price
Market price
In economics, market price is the economic price for which a good or service is offered in the marketplace. It is of interest mainly in the study of microeconomics...
s of cereal
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...
s, status of livestock
Livestock
Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...
, rangeland
Rangeland
Rangelands are vast natural landscapes in the form of grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts. Types of rangelands include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, savannas, chaparrals, steppes, and tundras...
conditions and trends, and enrollment on food-for-work projects. The system identifies three levels of crisis: alarm, alert and emergency, each of which is linked to a pre-planned response to mitigate the crisis and try to prevent a worsening of the situation.
International organizations responding to recent food crises created ad-hoc measurements. In 2002, the World Food Programme
World Food Programme
The World Food Programme is the food aid branch of the United Nations, and the world's largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger worldwide. WFP provides food, on average, to 90 million people per year, 58 million of whom are children...
created a number of "pre-famine indicators" for Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
and combined it with measurements of nutrition
Nutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
levels to create recommendations. The Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU) devised a system for Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
with four levels: Non-alert (near normal), Alert (requires close attention), Livelihood Crisis (basic social structures under threat) and Humanitarian Emergency (threat of widespread mortality requiring immediate humanitarian assistance).
Livelihoods strategies
The FSAU system is one of several recent systems that draws a distinction between "saving lives" and "saving livelihoods". Older models concentrated simply on the mortality of famine victims. However, relief agencies gradually realized that the means by which families and individuals supported themselves were threatened first.Previously famines had been perceived as a threat to individuals, even large numbers of individuals. Inherent in the livelihoods strategies outlook is the conception of famine as a social problem. Populations affected by increased food stress will try to cope through market structures (i.e. selling possessions for food) and reliance upon community and family support structures. It is only when such social structures collapse under the strain that individuals are faced with the malnutrition and starvation that has commonly been viewed as "famine".
During the 1980s and 1990s, studies of the process by which populations adapted to food stress as food security worsened received much attention. Four stages of the process were identified:
- Reversible strategies, in response to 'normal' food stress, such as rationing food or diversifying incomeIncomeIncome is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings...
- Irreversible strategies in response to prolonged food stress, such as selling breeding livestock or mortgaging land, which trade short-term survival for long-term difficulty
- The failure of internal coping methods and total dependence on external food aid
- Severe malnutrition leading to weakened immune systemImmune systemAn immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. It detects a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and needs to distinguish them from the organism's own...
s, illness and death, in the event of the failure of the first three levels of coping. Death caused directly by starvationStarvationStarvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
forms a fraction of deaths in a famine.
Nutrition levels
Various nutritionNutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
benchmarks have been proposed as the cut-off points for food insecurity levels. The United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Refugee Nutrition Information System lists a number of such indicator cutoff points:
- Wasting - defined as less than -2 standard deviationStandard deviationStandard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...
s in body weight, usually for children between six and 59 months - 5-10% = normal in AfricaAfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n populations in non-droughtDroughtA drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
conditions - Greater than 20% = "serious situation"
- Greater than 40% = "severe crisis"
- Oedema due to kwashiorkorKwashiorkorKwashiorkor is an acute form of childhood protein-energy malnutrition characterized by edema, irritability, anorexia, ulcerating dermatoses, and an enlarged liver with fatty infiltrates. The presence of edema caused by poor nutrition defines kwashiorkor...
(swollen belly) is always a "cause for concern" - Crude mortality rate (CMR), i.e. number of deaths per ten thousand people in a time span
- 1/10,000/day = "serious situation"
- Greater than 2/10,000/day = "emergency out of control"
- Under-five mortality rate (U5MR), i.e. number of deaths of children under five years of age within a time span
- 2/10,000/day = "serious situation"
- 4/10,000/day = "emergency out of control"
The use of these cut-offs is contentious. Some argue that a crude mortality rate of one death per ten thousand people per day is already a full-scale emergency. Others note that while most indicators are focused on children, parents will often reduce their own food consumption in favor of their children. Child malnutrition may thus be a trailing indicator, indicating non-emergency levels even after adult malnutrition has reached crisis levels. It has also been noted that malnutrition is often not directly related to food availability; malnutrition is often the result of disease or poor child-care practices, even with adequate food availability.
Combined intensity and magnitude scales
In an influential paper published in 2004, Paul Howe and Stephen Devereux, both of the Institute of Development StudiesInstitute of Development Studies
The Institute of Development Studies based at the University of Sussex is a global organisation for research, teaching and communications on international development....
at the University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
, set forth a measurement of famine with scales for both "intensity" and "magnitude", incorporating many of the developments of recent decades. The intensity scale is:
| Level | Phrase | Lives | Livelihood |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Food secure | Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) < 0.2/10,000/day and/or Wasting < 2.3% | Cohesive social system; food prices stable; Coping strategies not utilized |
| 1 | Food insecure | 0.2 <= CMR <0.5/10,000/day and/or 2.3% <= Wasting < 10% | Cohesive social system; Food prices unstable; Seasonal shortages; Reversible coping strategies taken |
| 2 | Food crisis | 0.5 <= CMR < 1/10,000/day, 10% <= Wasting < 20%, and/or prevalence of oedema | Social system stressed but largely cohesive; Dramatic rise in food and basic items prices; Adaptive mechanisms begin to fail; Increase in irreversible coping strategies |
| 3 | Famine | 1 <= CMR < 5/10,000/day, 20% <= Wasting < 40%, and/or prevalence of oedema | Clear signs of social breakdown; market Market A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers... s begin to collapse; coping strategies exhausted and survival strategies (migration in search of help, abandonment of weaker members of the community) adopted; affected population identifies food scarcity as the major societal problem |
| 4 | Severe famine | 5 <= CMR <15/10,000/day, Wasting >= 40%, and/or prevalence of oedema | Widespread social breakdown; markets close; survival strategies widespread; affected population identifies food scarcity as the major societal problem |
| 5 | Extreme famine | CMR >= 15/10,000/day | Complete social breakdown; widespread mortality; affected population identifies food scarcity as the major societal problem |
On the magnitude scale:
| Category | Phrase | Mortality range |
|---|---|---|
| A | Minor famine | 0-999 |
| B | Moderate famine | 1,000-9,999 |
| C | Major famine | 10,000-99,999 |
| D | Great famine | 100,000-999,999 |
| E | Catastrophic famine | 1,000,000 and over |
Using this framework, each famine would receive a Magnitude designation, but locations within the affected region would be classified at varying Intensities. The 1998 southern Sudan famine
1998 Sudan famine
The famine in Sudan in 1998 was a humanitarian disaster caused mainly by human rights abuses, as well as drought and the failure of the international community to react to the famine risk with adequate speed. The worst affected area was Bahr El Ghazal in southwestern Sudan...
would be a C: Major Famine, with an intensity of 5: Extreme famine in Ajiep village ranging to 3: Famine in Rumbek
Rumbek
Rumbek is a town in South Sudan.-Location:The town of Rumbek is located in Rumbek Central County, Lakes State in central South Sudan. This location lies approximately , by road, northwest of Juba, the capital and largest city in that country. Rumbek sits at an elevation of above sea level...
town. In comparison, the 2000 Ethiopian famine in Gode
Gode
Gode is a city in the Ethiopian part of the Ogaden. Located in the Gode Zone of the Somali Region, the city has a latitude and longitude of...
district would be classified as a B: Moderate famine, and would thus should demand proportionally less of the limited resources available for famine relief.
While each organization working in famine-related areas has its own operational interpretation of specific indicators, the Howe-Devereaux framework has been widely adopted as a common framework by which famine warning and famine relief may be discussed worldwide, in particular in the use of the intensity scale. This has led organizations such as the World Food Programme to refrain from referring to the 2005 Niger food crisis as a famine, as indicators had not deteriorated into a Level 3: Famine.
See also
- Integrated Food Security Phase ClassificationIntegrated Food Security Phase ClassificationThe Integrated Food Security Phase Classification , also known as IPC scale, is a tool for improving food security analysis and decision-making...
(IPC) - Global Acute MalnutritionGlobal Acute MalnutritionGlobal Acute Malnutrition is a measurement of the nutritional status of a population that is often used in protracted refugee situations.Along with the Crude Mortality Rate, it is one of the basic indicators for assessing the severity of a humanitarian crisis.-Definition:To evaluate levels of GAM,...
External links
- Famine Intensity and Magnitude Scales: A Proposal for an Instrumental Definition of Famine, (PDF) Howe, P. and S. Devereux, Disasters, 2004, 28 (4): 353-372
- Extract from "The Challenge of Famine", Osfood Field, J. Kumarian PressKumarian PressKumarian Press is an independent academic publishing company established in 1977 in West Hartford, CT by Krishna Kumari Sondhi and Ian Mayo-Smith. The company was named after the founders . The company began publishing titles on management for training programs in international development, some of...
, Connecticut, 1993 - Synthesis Report on the Famine Forum (PDF), USAID and OFDA, May 2004
- How many dying babies make a famine?, BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
, 10 August 2005 - an article examining how the "famine" label was mediated by politicians and media in the 2005 Niger food crisis