Famines were certainly common and devastating. I recommend Braudel's The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization & Capitalism: 15th-18th Century: Volume 1: "

Famines were certainly common and devastating. I recommend Braudel's The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization & Capitalism: 15th-18th Century: Volume 1: "Famine recurred to insistently for centuries on end that it became incorporated into man's biological regime and built into his daily life. Dearth and penury were continual, and familiar, even in Europe, despite its privileged position... It could not have been otherwise. Cereal yields were poor; two consecutive bad harvests spelt disaster... France, by any standards a privileged country, is reckoned to have experienced 10 general (nation-wide) famines during the tenth century: 26 in the 11th... 13 in the sixteenth; 11 in the seventeenth, and 16 in the eighteenth." "For when they are extreme, demographic increases lead to a deterioration in the standard of living; they enlarge the always horrifying total of the underfed, poor, and uprooted. A balance between mouths to be fed and the difficulties of feeding them, between manpower and jobs, is re-established by epidemics and famines... these extremely crude adjustments were the predominant feature of the centuries of the ancien régime." Contrast this with Germany taking over a million migrants in during 2015, with none starving. How can agriculture be so much different now to be able to support something like this? Crop yields are much greater now due to artificial selection and technology: "From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the results were disappointing. For every grain sown, the harvest was usually no more than five and sometimes less. As the grain required for the next sowing had to be deducted, four grains were therefore produced for consumption from every one sown..." In Poland, Hungary and Slovakia between 1550 and 1650, yields were between 2 or 4 grains per 1! For 10% of Polish harvests, yields were below 2 to 1! Things have improved greatly: England 1200-49: 3.7 for 1 England 1750-1820: