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Modern research has shown that severe local famine can be triggered by a relatively small decrease in the world’s total supply of food-grains. In such cases, when emergency food aid from existing reserves can be delivered to the affected area, the most severe aspects of famine can be avoided. This form of crisis management has been applied to various regions of Africa, particularly during the droughts in the Sahel region of Africa,  in the early 1940s and between 1970 and 1985. Although drought is the principal trigger of famine, the resulting breakdown in food infrastructure has a complex etiology that involves interacting political, economic and social forces. The drought and famine in 1933 Stalinist Soviet Union was accompanied by a governmental decree sharply reducing the procurement of grain from the Ukraine and other fertile areas (in order to suppress nationalism and opposition to collectivization). This policy mitigated the famine in the urban areas and aggravated it in the rural areas. The worst famine in the 20th century occurred in China between 1958 and 1961. Here there was no general shortage of rainfall, but the reorganization of family-based farms into collectives under the Great Leap Forward  disrupted family life, lowered work incentives and eliminated private plots. The historic self-obliteration of the local food infrastructure resulted, directly and indirectly, in the death of an estimated 30 million people. ​

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