Famine Prevention Quotes

When we talk about famine, people start listing, as I have, its many different elements. We must not let the complexity of the subject put us off. We must continue putting our efforts into prevention.

I had the privilege of knowing and working with Norman Borlaug - who has been aptly described by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee as the greatest hunger fighter of our time - for nearly 50 years.

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have.

Famine has wreaked havoc in Ethiopia for so long, it would be stupid not to be sensitive to the risk of such things occurring. But there has not been a famine on our watch - emergencies, but no famines.

Famine emerges from a lack of interlocal trade; when one locality's food crop fails, since there is virtually no trade with other localities, the bulk of the people starve. It is precisely the permeation of the free market throughout the world that has virtually ended this scourge of famine by permitting trade between areas.

We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.

The humble American sweet potato helped China double its population to 300 million by 1800.

Famines are political. We all know that the immediate response to a famine must be food, aid, and shelter, but we should also look hard at what else can be done earlier on. It is not the lack of food but the fact that some people cannot get access to the food that causes the famine.

We traditionally in this world didn't have enough calories to feed all of us and had huge famines, not just in Africa, but had them across India, across Southeast Asia, and across China. Because of Borlaug's work at Simit and because of this we have huge excess, until very recently, in agricultural produce and the prices went through the floor.

We have ended hunger, but now we have to end famine.

You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?

From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.

We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be.

Amartya Sen is best known to the general reader for his powerful essays on famine. He is an optimist about some of our gravest economic problems, such as mass starvation in a world that at present can easily produce more food than everyone can eat. Reason and voluntary participation are his watchwords.

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

The future of peace and prosperity that we seek for all the world's peoples needs a foundation of tolerance, security, equality and justice. That foundation is the family. It is only by protecting families, from famine as well as from fragmentation, that they can prosper and contribute to the family of nations that is the United Nations.

The long-term solution in preventing another famine in Somalia is to promote self-reliance.

If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.

During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago.

With the dreary season in which we travelled part of the route; with our minds much more actively employed in forming resources for our preservation from famine.