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A drastic, wide-reaching food shortage.
A drastic shortage; a dearth.
Severe hunger; starvation.
Archaic Extreme appetite.

A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality.
Although many famines coincide with national or regional shortages of food, famine has also occurred amid plenty or on account of acts of economic or military policy that have deprived certain populations of sufficient food to ensure survival. Historically, famines have occurred because of drought, crop failure, pestilence, and man-made causes such as war or misguided economic policies. During the 20th century, an estimated 70 million people died from famines across the world, of who an estimated 30 million died during the famine of 1958–61 in China. The other most notable famines of the century included the 1942–1945 disaster in Bengal, famines in China in 1928 and 1942, and a sequence of man-made famines in the Soviet Union, including the Holodomor, Stalin's famine inflicted on Ukraine in 1932–33. A few of the great famines of the late 20th century were: the disaster in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Ethiopian famine of 1983–85 and the North Korean famine of the 1990s.
Famine is induced by a human population beyond the regional carrying capacity to provide food resources. An alternate view of famine is a failure of the poor to command sufficient resources to acquire essential food (the "entitlement theory" of Amartya Sen), analyses of famine that focused on the political-economic processes driving the creation of famine, an understanding of the complex reasons for mortality in famines, an appreciation of the extent to which famine-vulnerable communities have well-developed strategies for coping with the threat of famine, and the role of warfare and terrorism in creating famine. Modern relief agencies categorize various gradations of famine according to...