That's pretty recent, actually. According to the UN, in 1947 the global rate of undernourishment (a year or more of insufficient food) was approximately 50%. In

That's pretty recent, actually. According to the UN, in 1947 the global rate of undernourishment (a year or more of insufficient food) was approximately 50%. In 1975 the rate was 35% in the developing world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Famine has always been with us, at least until the last decade or so. Until very recently, a single crop failure could devastate a community. Huge swaths of the world were vulnerable to famines. Have a look at the mortality from famines by decade since the 19th century, from the Our World In Data project: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-since-1860s_March18.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Famine... , or the chart of famine deaths and durations from the same: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-number-of-famine-victimes-for-each-famine-revised.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-nu... . And this starts in a relatively modern timeframe. There's a good reason that famine was included as a horseman of the apocalypse, along with war, pestilence, and death. It is only recently that famine has been reduced to an exceptional occurrence. In previous generations, undernourishment was the norm, and famine not uncommon.