famine

n. starvation, great hunger; severe food shortage

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 whom 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.
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Noun
1. an acute insufficiency
(synonym) dearth, shortage
(hypernym) lack, deficiency, want
2. a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
(hypernym) calamity, catastrophe, disaster, tragedy, cataclysm
(hyponym) the Irish Famine, the Great Hunger, the Great Starvation, the Great Calamity

n. famine, starvation

[Native American] A name associated with a helping spirit who keeps the bones of animals rolled in her mat. Owing to a lack of honor, sometimes leads to people starving, since these animals will show themselves to be hunted or trapped.