Some scholars argue that the famines in Africa toward the end of the 20th century were more than anything else a result of the collapse of economically sustaina

Some scholars argue that the famines in Africa toward the end of the 20th century were more than anything else a result of the collapse of economically sustainable local agriculture resulting from rapid industrialization and cheap imported grains. Food became so cheap that farms couldn't produce enough income as going concerns; people quit farming en masse. Populations in countries with little local agriculture remaining became exceptionally vulnerable and susceptible to price and distribution shocks, such as from monetary or military conflict stressors. Many other countries have historically avoided famine in part because their political systems depended upon and heavily favored local agricultural interests--not the laborers, but specifically the financial security and opportunities of the agricultural land-owning classes. And when and where they didn't, e.g., Ireland in the late 19th century or China in the mid-20th century, things played out in predictable fashion. Such emphasis doesn't create an optimal state of affairs for maximizing overall wealth and economic equality, but it's one way, however primitive, to buffer volatility and minimize the chances of catastrophic food failure; and helps explain why such seemingly unfair socio-political favoritism, often with seemingly perverse side effects, persists today, let alone in the 1930s.