“If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” – Joseph Stalin
If I ask you to imagine 45 million people, you probably can’t.
What does it even look like?
That’s roughly twice the population of Australia, or the whole population of Spain or Argentina, or roughly 14% of the population of the United States.
45 million people of average size standing shoulder to shoulder would take up approximately 3.23 square miles!
It’s almost too enormous for comprehension.
Yet, as recently as 1958-62 (just over 60 years ago), widespread famine ravished China, and, according to historian Frank Dickotter 45 million (approx 7% of the population at the time) Chinese people died unnecessarily as a direct result of the Great Chinese Famine.
But why? How did it get this bad? Why didn’t people stop this from happening? And HOW can we use the lessons from the Great Chinese Famine to prevent this from happening to the American population–if it’s not too late already?
What is Famine?
You might think of famine as an isolated geographic area that has food production low enough to cause great human suffering, malnutrition, and probably some level of starvation.
Wiki has this to add “According to the United Nations World Food Programme, famine is declared when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food.” (emphasis added)
With this broader umbrella of famine, one could easily and rightly argue that the United States of America is already experiencing famine. Or, one could say we are on the brink of massive famine, possibly already too far down the slippery slope to right ourselves before catastrophic damage.
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