Famine Foods: Plants We Eat to Survive 0816542252, 9780816542253

Table of contents :
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Context of Famine Food Use
Types of Food Shortages
Distribution of Food Shortages
Food Shortages Are More than Starvation
Emic Views of Food Shortages
Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages
Some Responses to Serious Food Shortages Other than Use of Famine Foods
Anticipatory Actions
Economic Diversification
Storage
Social Banking
Economic Specialization
Mitigation Responses
Changes in Consumption of Common Foods
Ritual Responses
Migration
Demographic Changes
Selling Goods, Oneself, and Debt
Theft
Consumption of Nonplant “Food”
Community Organizations and Responses to Food Shortages
Nonagricultural Societies
Rural Agricultural Communities
Urbanized Nations During Peace and War
Context of Famine Food Use
2. Famine Foods: Characteristics and Types
Major Types of Famine Foods
Relief Supplies
Increased and Novel Crop Usage
Seed Stock
Animal Feed
Agricultural Refuse
Native Plants
Tabooed Foods
Native Plants Used Only During Shortages
Unknown and Mimic Plants
Famine Foods by Plant Families
Plants Parts Used as Famine Foods
Nutritional Value of Famine Foods
Geographic Distribution of Famine Foods
Plants Used During Famines Other than for Food
Nature of Famine Foods
3. Examples: Nonagricultural Societies
San of Southern Africa
Australian Aboriginal Communities
Circumpolar Groups
Northwestern North America
Famine Foods Among Hunter-Gatherers
4. Examples: Villages and Rural Farming Communities
U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico
Gwembe Tonga and Their Neighbors in Southern Africa
Highland Papua New Guinea
Famine Food Use Among Village Agriculturalists
5. Examples: Urbanized Nations During Peace and War
Famine Foods During Peacetime
Ireland
India
China
Famine Foods During War
The Netherlands
Greece
Siege of Leningrad
Allied Publications for the Pacific Theater
Nations and Famine Foods
6. Final Thoughts on Unloved Food Plants
Defining Foods Used During Food Shortages
General Patterns of Famine Food Use
Value of the Study of Famine Foods
What Needs to Be Done
Final, Final Thoughts
References Cited
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Famine Foods

FAMINE

FOODS Plants We Eat to Survive

P A U L E . M I N N I S

The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2021 by The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2021 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4225-3 (paperback) Cover design by Derek Thornton, Notch Design Cover illustration: White dead-nettle from La Botanique de J. J. Rousseau by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Original from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Sara Thaxton in 10.25/15 Minion (text) and Porter Sans (display) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Minnis, Paul E., author. Title: Famine foods : plants we eat to survive / Paul E. Minnis. Description: Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020046898 | ISBN 9780816542253 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Plants, Edible—Social aspects. | Food supply. | Survival and emergency rations— Social aspects. | Famines. Classification: LCC TX357 .M725 2021 | DDC 363.8/83—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046898 Printed in the United States of America ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Dedicated to Richard I. Ford and Volney H. Jones

The true value of a food source is revealed not so much by how frequently it is used when it is abundant, but whether it is readily available when needed most. —Philip A. Clarke (2014:23)

Nihil praeter ventren [nothing but the belly] seems to be the motto of the starving multitudes. —Pietro Camporesi (1996:81), regarding medieval Italy

Others would try to satisfy their hunger with the tender juicy parts of the abundant river plants. The forest offered the hungry its berries, mushrooms, all kinds of roots, and even the leaves and bark of bushes and trees. . . . The fields were a favorite place for foraging. There one had the hope of finding something, mainly root vegetables from last year’s crop, preserved by the winter snow and frost. Potatoes, beets, and onions were priceless for the starving people, even if frozen. “A starving man does not sniff his food,” an old Ukrainian adage. —Miron Dolot (1985:216), describing his experiences during the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933

Contents

List of Illustrations Preface

1. Context of Famine Food Use Types of Food Shortages Distribution of Food Shortages Food Shortages Are More than Starvation Emic Views of Food Shortages Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages Some Responses to Serious Food Shortages Other than Use of Famine Foods Anticipatory Actions Economic Diversification Storage Social Banking Economic Specialization Mitigation Responses Changes in Consumption of Common Foods Ritual Responses Migration Demographic Changes

xiii xv

3 5 8 12 14 16 25 27 27 28 29 30 30 30 31 31 33

x | Contents

Selling Goods, Oneself, and Debt Theft Consumption of Nonplant “Food” Community Organizations and Responses to Food Shortages Nonagricultural Societies Rural Agricultural Communities Urbanized Nations During Peace and War Context of Famine Food Use

2. Famine Foods: Characteristics and Types Major Types of Famine Foods Relief Supplies Increased and Novel Crop Usage Seed Stock Animal Feed Agricultural Refuse Native Plants Tabooed Foods Native Plants Used Only During Shortages Unknown and Mimic Plants Famine Foods by Plant Families Plants Parts Used as Famine Foods Nutritional Value of Famine Foods Geographic Distribution of Famine Foods Plants Used During Famines Other than for Food Nature of Famine Foods

3. Examples: Nonagricultural Societies

33 34 34 35 36 36 37 38

40 41 43 44 45 45 45 46 47 48 48 49 52 56 60 62 63

65

San of Southern Africa Australian Aboriginal Communities Circumpolar Groups Northwestern North America Famine Foods Among Hunter-Gatherers

67 71 77 80 83

4. Examples: Villages and Rural Farming Communities

86

U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico Gwembe Tonga and Their Neighbors in Southern Africa Highland Papua New Guinea Famine Food Use Among Village Agriculturalists

91 98 101 105

Contents | xi

5. Examples: Urbanized Nations During Peace and War

110

Famine Foods During Peacetime Ireland India China Famine Foods During War The Netherlands Greece Siege of Leningrad Allied Publications for the Pacific Theater Nations and Famine Foods

114 114 118 126 137 138 144 146 150 153

6. Final Thoughts on Unloved Food Plants

156

Defining Foods Used During Food Shortages General Patterns of Famine Food Use Value of the Study of Famine Foods What Needs to Be Done Final, Final Thoughts

156 159 161 171 175

References Cited Index

179 207

Illustrations

Figures 1. 2. 3.

Locations of major case studies discussed in the text A !Kung San woman gathering plants Bush seeds at King’s Creek Station, Northern Territories, Australia 4. Inuit village of Qikiqtarjuaq on Broughton Island, Nunavut, Canada 5. Common bearberry, or kinnikinnick 6. Hopi fields in normally dry drainages showing the aridity of their environment 7. Gwembe Tonga village and millet fields 8. Chimbu man in ceremonial dress and his fields in Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea 9. Political cartoon from Puck magazine (1892) commenting on food disparity in imperial Russia 10. Sketch of the devastated Irish village of Killard from Illustrated London News (1850) 11. Indian states discussed in the text 12. Sample page from Watt’s (1889) Dictionary of the Economic Plants of India

36 68 72 78 82 95 99 102 111 115 119 121

xiv | Illustrations

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Fields in Rajasthan Chinese provinces discussed in the text Preface from the 1593 edition of the Jiuhuang Bencao Illustration of lotus root from the 1593 edition of the Jiuhuang Bencao Sample page from the English translation of the Jiuhuang Bencao with lotus root entry Sample page from Emergency Food Plants and Poisonous Plants of the Islands of the Pacific Goat’s head, or puncturevine Kudzu

123 127 129 130 131 152 169 170

Tables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Four Lists of Famines by Region Plant Families with the Most Species Listed as Famine Foods Plant Parts Most Commonly Used as Famine Foods Plant Parts Used in Five Studies Worldwide Comparison of Famine Foods Recorded for North America Caloric Value of Plant Parts Geographic Distribution of Famine Foods Comparison of Plant Foods Among Four San Groups Comparison of !Kung San “Normal” and “Supplementary” Plant Foods Comparison of Famine Foods for Australian Aboriginal Groups and !Kung San Famine Foods of the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico Hopi Famine Foods Famine Foods by Plant Part for Ethiopia Comparison of Famine Food Use by Hunter-Gatherers and Village Agriculturalists Irish Famine Foods Listed in Póirtéir Three Lists of Famine Foods Used in India Plants Used During the Dutch Hunger Winter, 1944 Comparison of Four Allied Survival Manuals for the Pacific Theater

9 50 52 53 55 58 61 69 70 77 93 96 107 108 117 122 141 153

Preface

T

he genesis of this book came about in an unexpected way. My two longterm academic interests, archaeology and ethnobotany, usually come together in the study of plant remains recovered from archaeological sites and what they can tell us about the relationships between humans and plants, the study of prehistoric ethnobotany. There is a small contingent of researchers, such as myself, who are fascinated by seeds, wood charcoal, and even microscopic remains like pollen and phytoliths, instead of pottery, jewelry, temples, and tombs, the things we normally see in archaeological museums, at national heritage sites, and on television documentaries. My colleagues and I labor under the belief that the size and aesthetic appeal of archaeological artifacts are not measures of their intellectual and practical importance. Occasionally, the study of archaeology and ethnobotany can lead to what can seem to be unexpected directions. The topic of this book is one of them. True, just as the study of plant remains from archaeological sites is an obscure academic niche in archaeology, so too the study of famine foods is an obscure and underappreciated niche of food scholarship. Similarly, the aesthetic and culinary appeal of a food is not a measure of its intellectual or practical value. My specific interest in famine foods derives from my doctoral research (Minnis 1981, 1985) on the Mimbres, a prehistoric archaeological tradition in

xvi | Preface

the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico (SW/NW), a region of spectacular archaeological remains with often excellent preservation, rich ethnographic and historical records, and detailed descriptions of the region’s robust biotic diversity. I argued that the end of this ancient tradition was due to the nature of their too highly integrated social relations and inability to cope with a period of food scarcity in the early AD 1100s caused by a return to a more typical weather regime after a century of an unusually favorable climate for farming. As an offshoot of my doctoral research, I noticed an interesting pattern. The plants recorded as famine foods in the ethnographic literature for Indigenous peoples in the SW/NW are often the same plants we find in many archaeological sites that are the long-abandoned residences of their ancestors (Minnis 1991). Further study and reflection led to the conclusion that changes in the use of indigenous famine foods after contact with the Spanish were due to modifications in diet, crop assemblages, farming, and land use, among other changes. This led to altered food preference patterns, with foods normally consumed in ancient times becoming famine foods in post-Spanish contact times. This example is discussed in greater detail in chapter 4. While delving into the literature on foods eaten during shortages, it quickly became apparent that the topic of famine food use is largely ignored, and when not ignored, typically falls into three types of studies. The first and most common are theoretical and comparative works about famines and other food crises along with specific case studies that emphasize the political economics and history of national and international relief supplies, governmental actions, and food prices in markets. I was surprised how little such studies consider foodstuffs other than agricultural staples and relief supplies. The second and third types of studies, with some notable exceptions, discuss famine food use more, but do so in quite different ways. The second type lacks contextual specificity, and the third type lacks botanical specificity. The second type consists of botanical lists of plants used during food shortages with insufficient information about the context of their use. These may provide indigenous names and a short statement about how they are prepared, but too often little else. Consumption questions of who, how, when, and why remain to be asked. The third type of study is ethnographic or historical narratives that mention the use of famine foods but often with little to identify

Preface | xvii

what the plants are beyond indistinct categories such as “greens,” “weeds,” “bark,” or “grasses.” I hope that this volume in some way finds a middle path, but this does not mean that it covers all aspects of famine food use equally. The relationships between people and plants are studied by biological and social scientists. I fit more in the latter category. Consequently, I will not focus on the biochemistry of famine foods even though the chemical and nutritional characteristics of famine foods are essential characteristics for obvious reasons. In the same vein, I do not deal in any detail with the ecology and biogeography of famine foods. Rather, I emphasize the cultural contexts of famine food use. In fact, the overall framework of this volume is structured by the nature of and differences among human societies and how these affect the use of foods during shortages. By looking at famine foods by various nonagricultural groups (chapter 3), village and rural agriculturalists (chapter 4), and nations (chapter 5), I hope to provide a broad perspective on the topic. What social science is largely missing in this book is an emphasis on economics and political economy. These topics are very well represented in the literature on famines and other food shortages. The connections between archaeology and ethnobotany in the study of famine foods are deeper than their shared academic obscurity. They share two important perspectives: both recognize the deep and important relationships between society and nature and know that a historical perspective is essential for understanding humanity and its place in the “natural” world. First, the use of famine foods is not solely determined by the characteristics of plants and their distribution. There are important biological factors in the use of famine foods, such as the presence of noxious or even poisonous chemicals or structures that can require extraordinary efforts to render the plants edible without unduly harmful effects, or the fact that the plants are so locally rare that collection only makes sense when other more preferred foods are not available. However, the biological nature of the famine foods is only half the story. The other half involves people, the consumers of famine foods. When, where, and how people collect foods often scorned is as much a function of society as biology, as we will see in the following chapters. Hence, we have the value of a social science perspective combined with a botanical one. The two approaches are too infrequently combined.

xviii | Preface

Second, archaeology and ethnobotany deal with most of human existence and change through time, often over long time spans, so they sensitize us to understanding that famine food use can alter with changing biotic and cultural conditions. Some historical shifts in diet have been dramatic. Consider the transformations in food use worldwide after the “Columbian exchange,” resulting in the rapid spread of Western Hemisphere plants such as chiles, cassava, and maize to Asia or the adoption of Eastern Hemisphere crops such as wheat, coffee, and rice in the Americas (e.g., Crosby 1972; DeWitt 2014). These introduced plants often became the staples for the receiving communities. For example, two Western Hemisphere crops, maize and cassava, are the most important single caloric sources for eight of 10 East African countries (FAO 1988:Table 5). A classic historical example of the importance of these intercontinental exchanges as they relate to famine foods is the Irish Potato Famine. This terrible event began when a blight affected the potato, a plant originally from South America that had become the subsistence mainstay for a large number of impoverished Irish peasants. Another plant from the Western Hemisphere, maize, was a major relief supply that helped sustain those affected. Since famine food use can change, ethnographic slice-in-time descriptions of famine foods tell us only part of the story. How people eat today is not a complete record of food use through the ages. Knowledge of foods can change and can be forgotten. History, including prehistory, is critical for a fullest understanding of the role of famine food consumption in human history. One obvious danger in working on a topic that involves discussion of many cultures and regions from throughout the world, many of which I have only a limited knowledge of, is that the complexity of the linkages between peoples and their use of plants during food shortages is simplified too much. This problem may well affect my discussion of some regions. This is most likely to be true for countries where I cannot read primary data in their original language, such as China or Russia. My apologies to scholars of these areas, but I hope any inadequacies in glossing over the intricacies of each example are offset by bringing information to a wider audience and perhaps stimulating more interest and research in the topic of plant foods useful during food shortages.

Preface | xix

As will be considered in the final chapter, I think this topic has interest and value far beyond its academic merits that are not well recognized. This is perhaps understandable but still disconcerting. Let me provide but two examples of the neglect of famine foods. The Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues (1985) did not mention the use of local foods, let alone famine foods, to ameliorate food shortages. More recently, a massive, nearly 600-page, double-column volume on managing risk due to climate change considers agriculture in detail, as it should, but not the availability of local plant foods or how crops can be eaten in atypical ways (Field et al. 2012). It is true that consumption of these foods is not as important as relief supplies and improving agriculture, but they are not irrelevant either. There are practical uses for the study of famine foods. Documentation of famine food use is especially necessary now with rapid climate change, alarming water shortages, ever expanding human population, obscene economic inequality, looming food insecurity, and accelerating resource depletion, all conditions that could create or intensify food shortages. The world is littered with the remains of societies that suffered dramatic change, if not collapse, the stuff we archaeologists often study. Archaeology clearly demonstrates that there is no guarantee that specific human societies, cultures, communities, or nations will necessarily survive unchanged—or survive at all—and that change at times can be catastrophic with dire consequences for the affected people. Therefore, it is prudent to be prepared for all reasonable outcomes as unlikely as they may appear now. Even if mass starvation is completely eliminated in the future, as we can all hope, the study of famine foods still has merit, as is discussed in the final chapter. Four housekeeping notes. First, this volume will not have photographs of living people suffering severe starvation. This would disrespectfully reduce them to their worst moments and ignore their fuller and more meaningful humanity. Second, this volume does not deal to any real extent with the use of famine foods by nomadic pastoralists. Such groups are interesting, because they offer examples to explore questions about the knowledge and use of lowpreference foods over wide geographic areas and diverse environments they often traverse.

xx | Preface

Third, many examples examined here list common plant names, scientific names, and sometimes both. For well-known plants, such as maize/corn (Zea mays) or potato (Solanum tuberosum), I do not include the Latin binomial everywhere in the text. Whenever possible I include the scientific and common names at least the first time mentioned when they could be determined, but it was not always possible to ascertain the Latin binomial or common name. In cases where there were ambiguities in determining which specific plant is being referenced, I simply left the originally cited name to reduce the chance of erroneous attribution. Plant names, both vernacular and scientific, are those presented as in the original publication, not necessarily the currently recognized names, so that Latin binomials may be out-of-date. Examples include kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata) that is identified as P. lobata in some older publications, and Indian ricegrass, formerly Oryzopsis hymenoides, is now Achnatherum hymenoides. Also, common names vary regionally and can be confusing. What is generally known as papaya (Carica papaya) in most of the world is called “paw paw” in Papua New Guinea. Pawpaw in North America is a completely different plant (species in the genus Asimina, which is in a different family, the custard apple family, Annonaceae) from the Papua New Guinean paw paw (the papaya family, Caricaceae). In some cases, I will list both common names to avoid confusion. Also, organisms, not formally plants, such as fungi, are included here because they are often considered plants by many people. For current scientific plant names, consult various sources. For the United States, http://plants .usda.gov is a good place to begin. Other sources with wider geographic coverage are the International Plant Name Index (http://www.ipni.org) and Plants of the World Online (http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org). Frustratingly, a number of sources do not indicate what plant part was used. I will not guess which part is referenced because it may well be one not commonly consumed. Alternative uses are especially likely during food shortages. Fourth, many plants discussed in the text are toxic and can even be lethal without significant processing to render them edible, one of the reasons some of them are famine foods. Even staple foods can require significant processing to make them safe to consume. For hundreds of millions of people, many varieties of cassava/manioc/yuca (Manihot esculenta) require extensive leaching to remove toxic cyanogenic glycosides from the roots.

Preface | xxi

Therefore, readers are cautioned not to eat the plants mentioned unless they are completely certain that they know how to prepare them safely. This is not a how-to book. Numerous people helped in various ways with this book and the intellectual work preceding it. The first mil gracias goes to Richard I. Ford, retired former director of the Ethnobotany Laboratory at the University of Michigan, who was essential in shaping my nascent and naïve interest in ethnobotany and archaeology. Volney H. Jones, Ford’s doctoral advisor and also retired director of the lab, was an inspirational source of deep knowledge about ethnobotany and archaeology going back many decades. Although I first met him after the publication of my famine food paper in 1991, Robert Freedman’s decades-long work on famine foods and the resulting comprehensive database of these resources worldwide reinforced my interest in this topic. Various people and organizations that helped in a variety of ways with this manuscript include Eugene Anderson, Peter Boyle, Paul But, Susan Davis Carnahan, Lisa Cliggett, David Denkenberger, Frank Dikötter, Jonny Dillon, Wayne Elisens, Paul Fish, Suzanne Fish, Catherine Fowler, Robert Freedman, Pierre Fuller, Gerd Jørgensen, Jinshuang Ma, Debra Martin, Ciaran Morrison, the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin, Michael David Pirie, Zoe Popper, Anna Prentiss, Karl Rambo, Thayer Scudder, Mike Smith, Bruce Alexander Sorrie, Nancy Turner, viewsofthefamine .wordpress.com, the Wellcome Collection, Siwei Wu, John Yellen, and Xun Zhou. The taxpayers and donors who support the universities of Oklahoma and Arizona libraries deserve a large thank you. As always, the acquisition (Allyson Carter and Scott De Herrera), production (Amanda Krause and Leigh McDonald), and marketing (Abby Mogollón) staff at the University of Arizona Press as well as the copyeditor (Maya Allen-Gallegos) helped in too many ways to enumerate. Thanks to Patricia Gilman, my partner in crime for over four decades. Finally, while this volume is a dispassionate academic examination of foodstuffs eaten during shortages, we must not forget that this topic is usually about dreadful occasions leading to unimaginable and horrendous suffering and death that do not completely end when the immediate shortage is over, the kinds of wretchedness that only those who have survived it can truly understand.

Famine Foods

Context of Famine Food Use

One

Famine is one of the most horrible ways in which a society can decompose. It is doubly horrible because much of the decomposition occurs, out of sight of public witness, in the most intimate of contexts. —Joseph Lee (1997:167) No pen can exaggerate the suffering. Families separated to seek food, never to meet again. Children are beaten and turned from their homes. Wives are thrust out with two or three children clinging to them. The aged, the crippled, and the blind are left by the roadside to die. —J. E. Scott (1904:127) describing the 1888–1900 Chinese famine

W

hether it be the Irish An Gorta Mór, the Ukrainian Holodomor, an Indian akaal, a Chinese jiuhuang, a Russian golod, a Papua New Guinean taim hangre, an ancient Roman fames, or a British famine, severe food shortages have tested human ingenuity, perseverance, and endurance. Many readers may not be alive were it not for one type of ingenuity, the consumption of famine foods, by their ancestors. Speaking of the northern Chinese famine of 1920–1921, a governmental official wrote, “It is very true that many millions of people were able to eke out their existence by reliance on foods such as these” (Li 2007:301). Food shortages of various kinds and severities have been a part of humanity for as long as humans have existed. All too often we see horrendous images of starving people on the edge of death as a result of massive famines that can affect millions of people. What we do not see are images of other kinds of food shortages, such as yearly and anticipated “hunger seasons.” Whatever the severity and intensity of the food shortage, people try to ameliorate the effects of shortages

4 | Context of Famine Food Use

with various strategies such as reducing consumption, migrating, selling goods, or obtaining loans, et cetera. This volume focuses just on one set of behavioral responses to food shortages, the use of plant foods under these circumstances. Numerous terms have been coined to describe plants eaten during food shortages including “starvation foods,” “alternative foods,” “substitute foods,” “unusual foods,” “emergency foods,” “supplementary foods,” “strange foods,” “unconventional foods,” “need foods,” “life support species,” “stopgap foods,” “ersatz foods,” “desperate foods,” “hard times foods,” “country foods,” “food augmentations,” and “queer foods.” The term “famine food” is the one used most commonly, but it is misleading. Famines are only one type of food shortage that requires people to eat foods they normally would not consume, eat them in atypical ways, or use them in unusual amounts. Perhaps better terms for these edibles would be “foods eaten during food shortages,” “low preference foods,” or even “lowest preference foods,” since it is hard to conceive of foods less desirable than some of those used during severe food shortages. Still, given its widespread and familiar use, I will use “famine food” as an overarching term for foods eaten during all types of food shortages. There has been a very long but sporadic history of scholarly interest in plants used as famine foods. Galen of Pergamon, the second-century AD Greek scholar, referred to people in Asia Minor: “They ate twigs and shoots of trees and bushes, and bulbs and roots of indigestible plants; they filled themselves with wild herbs, and cooked fresh grass” (translated and quoted in Garnsey and Saller 1987:97). As discussed in greater detail in the following chapters, India and China also have had long traditions of studying famine foods with the fifteenth-century Chinese Jiuhuang Bencao (Chiu Huang Pen Ts’ao [Famine relief herbal]) being the outstanding early example. People in cultures without written records also were keen observers of food available during shortages, although it is more difficult to study the history of famine food use in these situations. Consumption of things other than plants recorded as having been used as famine foods, such as pets, zoo animals, other humans, bird droppings, animal manure, rodent pests, and insects, fall outside the scope of this volume, as do geophagia and consumption of other inorganic materials (MacClancy et al. 2009). However, I think that the major pattern of plant famine food use,

Types of Food Shortages | 5

the apparent sliding scale of eating foods of increasingly lower preference as food shortages become more severe, also apply to animals eaten during food shortages. There are, of course, unique differences between the use of animal and plant famine foods. Nonplant famine foods have different nutritional profiles than plants. Consumption of draft animals will likely affect future agricultural production as well as transportation of foodstuffs. Because of these concerns as well as religious ones, various organizations in India provided relief for cattle during famines (e.g., Bhatia 1967; Mishra 2013). There are relationships between the use of plant famine foods and nonplant famine foods. For example, in communities where livestock is important, people frequently consume what is normally animal feed. During food shortages, the Kapanarans of Papua New Guinea cultivate new fields farther from settlements so that, among other reasons, the field will not be near their domesticated pigs and therefore they need not construct fences (Grossman 1984). Geophagia during food shortages can not only provide a sense of satiety but may also help detoxify bitter or unpleasant tasting plant foods (Johns 1986).

Types of Food Shortages Periods of mass starvation are often assumed to have been due to natural catastrophes, such as floods, massive storms, droughts, pestilence, and fire. Food shortages are most often the result of the unfortunate confluence of both natural and human factors. Environmental events may start a shortage, but human actions often exacerbate, change, or modify the effects of the food shortfalls. And the reverse has occurred: human action resulting in food shortages can be made worse by natural factors. In fact, one can argue that the majority of the most devastating famines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were due to armed conflicts and/or governmental policies. It has been argued, for example, that governmental actions regarding markets and land use were central to understanding famines under British colonial policies in both Ireland and India (Hebert 1987). Twentieth-century examples include rapid collectivization and radical agricultural policies in the Soviet Union, China, Ethiopia, and Cambodia, which are prime case studies of

6 | Context of Famine Food Use

massive, centralized economic reorganization that resulted in obscene levels of starvation and death (e.g., Ea 1984; Howard-Hassmann 2016; Keneally 2011; see especially Ó Gráda [2009] and Dando [ed. 2012] for wide-ranging consideration of modern famines). There is a wide variety of food shortages that forms a continuum from relatively short periods of seasonally reduced food availability that are expected at one end to massive famines that kill many and can affect societies and nations for generations at the other end. The reasons for food shortages are often complicated. Shortages can involve absolute lack of food in a region, but they can also be due to people not having the resources to acquire food that may well be available to those with funds to buy it, termed “entitlements” by Sen (1981). Chronic malnutrition and areas with specific nutrient deficiencies are types of food shortages not discussed here. Rather, I will focus on periods of time with overall lack of food or lack of access to food by many people. On one end of the continuum of food shortages are annual hunger seasons. They are expected, can be part of the normal variation in yearly food availability, and are often simply endured (e.g., de Garine and Harrison 1988; Devereux et al. 2008; Huss-Ashmore et al. 1988; Sahn 1989). Research on hunger seasons is especially common in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., HussAshmore and Katz 1989; Ogbu 1973) but also in other areas such as Bangladesh (e.g., Khandker and Mahmud 2012). Hunger seasons may increase death rates among those particularly vulnerable segments of society (the sick, old, and the young) and may affect the health of everyone, such as causing weight loss and susceptibility to illness, but they do not necessarily cause long-lasting or existential threats to human communities (Hitchcock 1988). Still, Devereux and colleagues (2008:32) refer to hunger seasons as “the father of famine” and argue that “famine cannot be stopped unless seasonal hunger is stopped” and address solutions to ending hunger seasons. Part of the solution should be consideration of the use of famine foods. For example, Moris notes that “perhaps the most common hunger-period adaptation shown in traditional African systems was for a household to turn to wild sources of food” (1989:220). Unlike large-scale famines, there is no way to estimate the frequency of hunger seasons among the thousands of cultures in the world largely because of underreporting of such events.

Types of Food Shortages | 7

At the other extreme are massive famines. Recognizing the interrelationships between natural and human factors in famines, Dando (2012) defines six general types of famines. Physical famines tend to occur in regions where the environment is not conducive to the economies of its inhabitants, such as zones with poor or uncertain agricultural potential. Transportation famines happen when transportation infrastructure is disrupted. Cultural famines are those where food deficiencies are “induced by archaic social systems, cultural prejudices, or culture discrimination” (Dando 2012:145). Political famines are those where political factors cause food shortages. Overpopulation famines occur where there is insufficient carrying capacity, due to weather variation or poorly developed productive infrastructure. Finally, urban famines are the result of an inadequate food supply for city dwellers that can occur for a variety of reasons. Regardless of how they are defined, these terrible events receive the greatest attention and for good reason. They are not only terrible and all too frequent but often have long-term consequences. Focusing on Europe, Nicol (1971:11) argues that “from the beginning of the Christian era, the British Isles, France, and the Germanic states appear to have had a famine or serious food shortages every 2 or 3 years until 1870. In Bohemia, Poland, and Austria the same seems to have been the case. In Russia and the Ukraine the famines continued until about 1933. Ireland does not seem to have been as badly hit in the 1900 years as England, Scotland, and France although the potato famine of 1845–1847 was of great severity.” An early study by students at the University of Nanking listed 1,828 famines somewhere in China from 108 BC to AD 1911 (Mallory 1926). Hasell and Roser (2017) list 77 major famines since 1860s—“major” meaning food shortages with more than 1,000 estimated deaths and excluding famines for which death estimates had not been made. The number of deaths for individual famine events range from the low thousands to the Chinese famine of 1958–1962 during the Great Leap Forward when an estimated 15,000,000–33,000,000 individuals died. Others estimate a lower death toll for that one Chinese famine (Ó Gráda 2009), while other scholars estimate the deaths as high as 45,000,000 (Dikötter 2010). This famine was not unique, as an estimated 3,000,000 Chinese died from starvation each year during the 1930s (Goldberg 2003). The total estimated deaths for Hasell and Roser’s 77 famines range from nearly 99,000,000 to

8 | Context of Famine Food Use

almost 128,000,000, and Devereux (2000) estimates that around 75,000,000 people died during famines in the twentieth century. These figures may well underestimate deaths, as there have been unreported periods of food shortages with death, and there is not complete agreement about these figures, as we see with the widely different death estimates for the 1958–1962 Chinese famine. Deaths are only one measure of the toll of famines; survivors often experience long-term health effects, and social instability is common. Whatever the “exact” death toll, a figure likely never to be agreed upon, and other effects, it is nevertheless true that famines have been one of the most active of the dreaded Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In between hunger seasons and massive famines are a range of food shortages that vary in severity, areal extent, and other characteristics. For our purposes, these will be termed “intermediate shortages.” Such food shortages are often anticipated based on historical experiences, but their exact time and severity are unknown until they happen. There is often cultural memory of such events and how to respond to them, with a number of strategies that groups can undertake in anticipation of food shortages. Perhaps these events are not as well-known because the responses are often effective, because the death totals are far less than for the most devastating famines, or because rural communities are often out of sight of media, policy makers, and researchers.

Distribution of Food Shortages Large-scale famines have been all too common, and there have been many compilations of famines in human history, but these can only provide the crudest estimates for a number of famines. These lists show that famines have not been evenly spaced across time and space. First, there is no agreed upon definition of what a famine is let alone the definition of “hunger seasons” and other types of food shortages. Second, historical records, especially those dealing with more ancient times, are sporadic and incomplete. Still, having a general sense of the distribution of famines provides a geographic and chronological framework for these events. Walford (1878) provided one of the earliest and widely cited lists of famines. However, it is skewed toward Europe. A century later, Dando (1980)

Distribution of Food Shortages | 9

used information about 800 famines to define five historical “famine regions”: Northeast Asia and the Middle East (4000–500 BC), Mediterranean Europe (501 BC–AD 500), Western Europe (AD 501–1500), Eastern Europe (AD 1501–1700), and Asia (AD 1701–1974). He enumerates specific famines for three areas and their number of famines: United Kingdom, 210; India, 132; and Russia, 43. And there are other compilations of famines (e.g., Golkin 1987). As Ó Gráda (2009:25) correctly argues, “Historians have been unable to resist the temptation to infer the incidence and frequency of famines from the documentary record.” As uncertain as the data are, and they certainly are, some very general patterns may be present. Table 1 presents four summaries of the geographic distribution of famines. What is clear is that the divergence of percentages by region reinforces Ó Gráda’s point. Europe ranged from 44% to 7%. The two high numbers, which are similar to Dando’s list for the United Kingdom, is almost certainly due to better historical records for Europe than many other regions, and the low percentage from the compilations of famines since the 1840s reflects the decrease in European famines during the past century and a half.

Ta b l e   1 Four Lists of Famines by Region (%) Region Europe Asiae India China Russiaf Africag Western Hemisphere

Hasell and Roser (N = 77)a

de Waal (N = 61)b

Golkin (N = 103)c

Wikipedia (N = 229)d

6.5 13.0 13.0 10.4 7.8 45.4 3.9

6.6 21.4 11.5 13.1 13.1 31.1 3.3

30.0 3.9 29.1 13.6 8.7 13.6 1.9

44.1 13.5 7.0 4.4 4.4 22.7 3.9

Hasell and Roser 2017; only famines since 1840s. De Waal 2018; only major famines 1870–1950. c Golkin 1987. d Wikipedia, “List of Famines,” September 26, 2019 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /List_of_famines). e Other than Russia, India, and China. f Includes Soviet Union. g Includes Cape Verde and Madagascar. a

b

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Regardless of the specific veracity of the lists, four patterns stand out. First, the two lists (Hasell/Roser and de Waal) dealing with famine since the mid to late 1800s are quite close in percentages, indicating that the better documented the history, the better the list. This should not surprise anyone. The second and most obvious is that no area of the world is immune to severe food shortages. During periods of favorable weather and economic conditions, peace, and stability, food shortages may be very infrequent if not rare, but these circumstances do not last forever. After the 1800s, much of western Europe was relatively prosperous and well fed, yet famines occurred, some of the worst because of major wars. Parts of Africa have experienced an unfortunately and unusually frequent string of famines during parts of the twentieth century. The third pattern indicates that famines are not rare events; in fact, they are quite common. This suggests that people have had extensive experience with famines and, assuredly, other types of food shortages as well. Out of these experiences, humans have developed a range of responses to deal with these problems, including the use of famine foods. Therefore, we would expect a large corpus of knowledge worldwide about what foods can be eaten during times of food deficiency. Finally, the fourth pattern suggests that few famines have been recorded in the Western Hemisphere compared with any region in the Eastern Hemisphere (see Cox 1978). The reasons for this geographic distribution are probably many. One factor is the shorter period of written records for the Western Hemisphere, with its lack of archival information for much of human history, so other types of information must be used to study food shortages. Famines and other general food shortages are difficult to detect in the archaeological record. The profound demographic consequences of significant population loss and even community collapse among Indigenous communities in the New World post-European contact and colonization may have altered the balance between available food and reduced consumption of the smaller population size and density leading to fewer severe food shortages. Some Western Hemisphere famines are known. The best-documented ancient one is a major, multiyear famine among the Aztecs around the year 1 Rabbit (AD 1454; Hassig 1981). The limited descriptions of the responses by the Aztecs seem similar to what people did in other better-documented

Distribution of Food Shortages | 11

famines, so there is no major difference that can be attributed to this case being in the Western Hemisphere. One issue recognized by Hassig as perhaps being especially salient was the lack of animal transportation in Mesoamerica (and also much of North America), which limited the efficient movement of foodstuffs over long distances. In the absence of water transportation, humans are inefficient beasts of burden for bulk goods such as food, so it is often more effective to move people to food rather than the reverse. Among the countries in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil has also had major famines during historical times (Davis 2001; de Castro 1952). There are two possible indirect indictors of the prevalence of famines in the Western Hemisphere in the absence of written records. One is the presence of numerous stories of famines and famine foods in folk accounts and rituals among Indigenous peoples (e.g., Minnis 1991; Parsons 1939; Turner and Davis 1993). A second is Moerman’s (1998) compendium of plant use by Native people in North America that lists 65 genera having been documented as “starvation foods,” from Acacia to Yucca. While far less than other areas of the world, 7% of the plants listed in Freedman’s (2019) comprehensive worldwide database of famine plant foods are from the Americas: 5% from North America and 2% from South America. Another possible indirect measure that may be useful in the future could be bone pathologies and other physical markers of starvation on human bones recovered from archaeological sites. The difficulty is in distinguishing what bone pathologies were caused by famines or severe food shortages as opposed to other stressors such as disease and general malnutrition that affect bone growth (Growland 2015; Morgan 2013). Innovative studies of isotopes in tissues and microscopic plant remains embedded in dental calculus from burials dating to the Irish Potato Famine that document a significant change in diet may offer analytic approaches useful for the study of the effects and severity of food shortages in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere (Beaumont and Montgomery 2016; Geber et al. 2019). While the Western Hemisphere may have had fewer devastating famines than the rest of the world, there does not seem to have been any major region of the world immune to these problems. Within the Eastern Hemisphere, famines have not been evenly distributed geographically or historically. European famines were common in the

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distant past but much less so since the twentieth century except for those caused by wars. While parts of Asia have had famines for centuries, the effects of colonialism and governmental policies have increased the severity of famines in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example, China has experienced famines for centuries, but institutions of traditional reciprocal aid were undercut with outside involvement (Fuller 2019). Bhatia (1967) noted that there was an increase in Indian famines from 1860 to 1908 due to greater commercialization of the economy related to British colonial policies. De Waal (2018) argues that famines almost ended until their resurgence in the 2000s but may increase again. Just as the distribution of famines and other periods of food shortages is not even, famine literature is also geographically varied. While the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s was not the most lethal in the world’s history, it had significant demographic, social, and political consequences for the Irish nation and other countries. It is not surprising that this event has yielded an enormous corpus of academic work. Likewise, scholars working on Indian and Chinese famines have produced many studies, particularly on the political economy of food shortages but also about the ethnobotany of famine food use. Although not as well-known, food shortages in Africa have been the subject of much interest. For example, a “select” bibliography on sub-Saharan famines, not including the Sahel, from 1978 has 635 citations (Seeley 1986a), and a companion publication lists 97 organizations, 69 bibliographies, and 62 periodicals relevant to famines in Africa (Seeley 1986b). And much academic and analytic work on African famines has been conducted since then.

Food Shortages Are More than Starvation The dire consequences of food shortages are more than the starvation of individuals, although the physical effects of severe starvation are unspeakable (Cahill 1978; Caparrós 2014; Dyson and Ó Gráda 2002; Keys et al. 1950). In addition to immediate deaths due to starvation, famines can cause political upheaval, migration, and profound long-term changes in the health of surviving individuals and communities, the demographic structure of communities, societal organization, and the history of human groups over wide

Food Shortages Are More than Starvation | 13

areas. While these topics are critical concerns, they are ancillary to the focus of this volume. The other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse (pestilence, war, and death) are closely related to famines. The relation between death and famines is obvious, although the nature of this relationship is not what many expect. Numerous scholars (e.g., Bang 1978; Bongaarts and Cain 1982; Ó Gráda 2009) have summarized arguments that diseases (pestilence) and ill health cause more deaths than starvation itself during severe food shortages. War was not always associated with food shortages and vice versa. However, with the rise of conflicts among and within nations, famines and war have become closely related. The effects of armed conflict on food supplies can be indirect. For example, the consequences of the infamous Bengal famine of 1943 were made more severe by the fact that the British colonial powers were preparing for a Japanese invasion. The destruction of boats and other infrastructure to impede the Japanese advance had the effect of making the movement of relief supplies far more difficult (Keneally 2011; Ó Gráda 2009; Venkataramani 1973). More recently, the central Ethiopian government used starvation as a tactic during the 1980s civil war (Griffin 1987). Perhaps a Fifth Horseman—ecological change—should be added, which is a complex beast indeed. Environmental changes as they affect the use of famine foods can occur in other ways such as alternations in hydrology, water availability, and availability of other materials needed for food preparation and consumption. During the Chinese famine of 1958–1962, it has been estimated that nearly all trees in one area were cut down for firewood and at least 100,000 houses were dismantled for their wood (Yang 2012). This could have limited the availability of some famine foods such as leaves and inner bark. The potential yet now unknown effects of global climate change surely will affect the availability of potential famine foods. Anthropogenic environmental deterioration is another facet of the Fifth Horseman. Expansion of human populations and agriculture has, as we all know, caused environmental changes. One of the most widespread is deforestation, which has implications for use of famine foods. An instructive example is ethnobotanical work among villages in rural Zimbabwe (Zinyama et al. 1990), where variation in the use of native plant foods was found. One of the primary factors determining greater or less use of wild plants

14 | Context of Famine Food Use

during food shortages was settlement history. Newer settlements used more wild plants than longer established villages, because the newer communities had greater access to native vegetation; old villages were surrounded by areas deforested over time. This is consistent with observations for other areas of Zimbabwe (Gomez 1988). No doubt areas such as the Amazon Basin and many parts of southeast Asia are experiencing a similar situation of deforestation with resulting biotic change that can lead to a reduction in potential famine foods available to local populations.

Emic Views of Food Shortages In order to best understand the human dimension of food shortages, it is useful to recognize that the view of shortages by its victims (an emic, or insider’s, perspective) is not necessarily the same as outsiders’ perspectives. This includes ideas about what causes food shortages and what the appropriate responses are. An instructive example is the study of severe food shortages, including famines, in Darfur, Sudan, during the last part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century (de Waal 2005). The names for recalled famines in Darfur are complex and fall into four major categories: “shortages of grain,” “times of high price of grain,” “places where people had to travel to buy grain,” and one referring to “uncivil times of grain management.” Also used to name famines are associations with wild foods eaten— such as “mother of Mikheit” (a type of wild grain important during times of food shortages)—people responsible for shortages, animals, and the causes of famines. One famine in 1888–1892, likely the worst in memory, simply had no name, perhaps because it was so exceptional that it needed no name to be separated from other famines. In the Kitui area of Kenya, two types of shortages are recognized: nzaa are short-term food shortages whereas yua are long-term food shortages (O’Leary 1980). Each of the 17 famines between 1904 and 1962 has a specific name and sometimes multiple names. Examples include Yua ya Malakwe (red flour issued as a relief supply, 1944–1946), Yua ya Kakuti (type of dance women have to do before receiving food, 1928– 1929), and Yua ya Makonge (high sisal prices, 1949–1950). The Massa and Mussy of Chad and Cameroon distinguish different types of food shortages

Emic Views of Food Shortages | 15

(de Garine and Koppert 1988). Minor shortages, mayra, are marked by when one does not get enough food at a meal, when one eats a meal without cereals (their staple crops), or other food triggers. The most serious shortages, termed baknardsa (“starvation”), are signaled “first when children cry constantly, then the people no longer move around, and then they begin to die” (de Garine and Koppert 1988:237). Emic views of the causes of food shortages often are seen through moral/ religious frames. Severe food shortages are considered evidence of social, religious, and cultural imbalances or problems. For example, the Nyakyusa of southern Tanzania and northern Malawi believe that food shortages are due to either the senility of chiefs or their neglect of priestly duties (Wilson 1959). Ritual “indifference,” accusations of witchcraft, and quarrels among some Indigenous communities in the U.S. Southwest are considered the causes of droughts and famines (e.g., Cushing 1920; Leighton and Adair 1963; Parsons 1939; Smith and Roberts 1954). The Huastec of Mexico see crop failures as divine displeasure that requires repenting of sins (Alcorn 1984). The Wola of Papua New Guinea attribute climate-caused food shortages to the actions of a mythical woman, Horwar Saliyn, although they do not know exactly how she affects climate (Sillitoe 1993). Accusations of witchcraft and conflict were associated with the 1996–1997 drought among the Hewa of Papua New Guinea (Haley 2001). Despite the best efforts of the officially atheist Chinese communist government during the famine of 1958–1962, in Hunan Province “villagers turned to religious healers, who were officially banned by the Communist government” (Zhou 2012:400). Food shortages are not necessarily the same as emic perceptions of hunger. While we will not deal directly with hunger in the absence of severe and overall provisioning problems, it is useful to understand that the idea of hunger and lack of food overall is complex. It is quite common for groups for whom one staple is the major source of sustenance to define hunger as the unavailability or under-availability of that foodstuff alone. The Palawan of the Philippines define hunger as when rice is in short supply regardless of the availability of other foods (Macdonald and Macdonald 1974). The Wamira of Papua New Guinea define hunger as the lack of taro rather than a total reduction or absence of food (Kahn 1986), whereas the Waro define hunger as a shortage of sweet potato (Sillitoe 1993). The concern of how hunger is defined is not

16 | Context of Famine Food Use

limited to village agriculturalists. The quantity and quality of bread largely defined the meaning of hunger of those trapped during the Siege of Leningrad and also during the Greek famine of the early 1940s (Nakou 1946), both discussed in chapter 5. Therefore, the triggers for responses to food shortages are best understood through culturally sensitive and informed knowledge.

Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages There is reason to believe that a large number of plants have been used as famine foods. It is well-known that Indigenous groups typically have sophisticated and in-depth knowledge of local ecologies, known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), or Indigenous science, that includes but is not limited to knowing what plants are useful, where they are, when are they available, and how to prepare them (e.g., Nelson and Shilling 2018). This degree of knowledge combined with the frequency of food shortages would lead one to expect large numbers of famine foods. Contrary to a common perception that Indigenous peoples are ecologically neutral, TEK also includes knowledge of how to manage or manipulate plants, even among hunter-gatherers. Such environmental manipulation can lead to increases in plants, such as fruits, available during food shortages (e.g., Dean 2010; Isendahl and Stump 2019; Minnis and Elisens 2000). Key to maintaining as many famine foods as possible is the role of knowledge perpetuated across generations that can take many forms. Use of this information is not always easy or straightforward due to “the opaque and complex workings of cultural memory,” which can forge together the present and the past (Noack et al. 2014a:11). However, I suspect that the issue with transferring knowledge of famine foods is less the opaque nature of this knowledge than the relative infrequency of their use in many instances. As Hionidou (2011) comments in her study of foods used during the Greek famine under German occupation during World War II, most foods used were those known and normally eaten by the population, although sometimes in lesser amounts and in different ways (see chapter 5). Therefore, we could expect that knowledge of these familiar foods should be transferred across generations. Fair enough. This point is then extrapolated more

Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages | 17

broadly and contrasted with an argument that people think of famine foods as unusual or not normally eaten consumables. As we see in the discussion of the case studies, both occur. True, people will tend to eat what is at least vaguely familiar and known to be edible. Yet under the most severe circumstances, there are many examples of people eating unfamiliar foods, disgusting foodstuffs, or things eaten in atypical ways. The discussion of China and the Siege of Leningrad in chapter 5 especially amplify this. Obtaining information about the use of foods during shortages seems to have been especially difficult for four major reasons related to the sharing of knowledge across generations. First, if famine foods are used infrequently, certainly less frequently than normal rations in most cases, generational transfer of knowledge of what is edible under dire conditions likely can be lost more easily than knowledge of other useful plants, particularly for urban populations with a lack of familiarity with edible flora. But the problem is not limited to urban settings. The Shuhi, an ethnic village group in Sichuan Province, China, rarely use leafy greens, but “several elderly people mentioned that they were mainly eaten in the past during times of food shortage” (Weckerle et al. 2006:11). Likewise, Muller and Almedom (2008; see also Muller and Guimbo 2008) studied famine food use in Boumba, Niger. They note a historical change in famine food where informants recognize some plants used as famine foods in the past: “None of the participants had eaten these plants, but many older participants cited them as true ‘famine food’ plants. For the most part, these types of food have been replaced by corn, cassava, and other newer crops brought in through expanding trade patterns and increased aid efforts” (Muller and Almedom 2008:605). This potential loss is also seen in a study involving the Wamira, village agriculturalists in Papua New Guinea. In the distant past, prior to contact, drought meant that “Wamirans resorted to wild famine foods such as wild yams, licorice root, Cycas palm fruits, mola, and wild chestnuts, and increased trade with other villages. . . . Since contact, however, the government and mission have come to the villagers’ aid by supplying relief food which, undoubtedly, has altered these traditional responses to drought” (Kahn 1986:57). Of the 32 famine foods recorded for the Gwembe Tonga, knowledge of five of these was culturally maintained despite not having been used for at least 20 years (Scudder 1962). All these examples are situations ripe for the loss of knowledge about famine foods.

18 | Context of Famine Food Use

A possible counterargument is Bourke’s (1988) work in Papua New Guinea. He suggests that indigenous responses, including famine food use presumably, will not be lost in highland Papua New Guinea. His reasoning is based on two points. First, he posits that aid is most commonly given during the most spectacular food shortages so that indigenous responses will continue to be relied on during less severe food shortages. Second, he notes no decrease in the use of indigenous alternative foods except by those with access to money; poor members of the community still need to use traditional famine foods. Bourke may be correct for those people most remote from markets and poor, a category in which highland Papua New Guinea traditionally would be placed. “Remote” could also be related to an inability to access imported foods; for example, during times of conflict. Overall, however, I fear that knowledge of famine foods will be lost unless more substantial efforts are made to record these plants more systematically. A second factor making the study of famine foods difficult can be that famine foods often have a low status so people may be reluctant to provide this information to researchers and others. There are records of high-status/ chiefly people secretly eating normally forbidden food as described in chapter 2. The alternative is high-status people refusing food given by or prepared by low-status people. As late as the 1967 Indian famine, some members of the highest caste refused to eat food prepared or served by lower caste members at soup kitchens, whereas in other cases caste distinctions were ignored temporarily (Singh 1975). The status of foods may also affect the recording of food consumed. The underreporting of greens from native plants in Greece was due in part to their low status: “Not only did the upper classes consider that the peasants’ food was of a very poor quality and that the rural population was in need of enlightenment, but the latter folks were ridiculed, for example, for their consumption of nettles” (Hionidou 2011:120). The third reason is that the world’s population is urbanizing at an accelerating pace, and combined with increased industrialization of food production and distribution, large segments of the population are being removed from daily contact with the rich, native nonurban biotic settings and direct involvement with food production and harvesting. Even in rural communities with traditional knowledge of local uncultivated foods, some of which are used as famine foods, this knowledge can be poorly known or lost. Two

Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages | 19

examples illustrate this process. The Swedish government had to issue pamphlets and conduct demonstrations in the nineteenth century about how to use various local resources during food shortages, especially the use of lichen and inner bark to make bread (Eidlitz 1969). Sōukland (2016) examined knowledge of wild and emergency plant food use in Saaremaa, an Estonian island in the Baltic Sea. She found that there was a pronounced loss of local knowledge and that information from outside the village was not available to offset this knowledge erosion. Urban settings and market economies tend to lack the diversity and abundance of possible plant famine foods and have greater competition for them because of population density. Similarly, a study of the use of wild plants in central Nepal recorded 41 plants used but noted that “the elderly villagers with whom we spoke remembered specific species that were collected in times of food scarcity, but these are not used today because they are thought of as a food of last resort and not considered to be ‘tasty’” (Bhattarai et al. 2009:11). An oral history of the survivors of the Dutch Hunger Winter (Hongerwinter) of 1944–1945 seven decades afterward showed that people from rural areas retained more knowledge of famine food use than those from urban settings (Vorstenbosch et al. 2017), as examined in greater detail in chapter 5. A fourth reason is that even rural populations are increasingly being integrated into national and global market economies and other nonlocal institutions that provide a greater percentage of resources compared with locally available ones. Brokensha and Riley (1986) reexamined knowledge and use of plants by the Mbeere in eastern Kenya over a 15-year period. Erosion of knowledge was attributed to greater direct involvement with nonlocal institutions, such as the use of hospitals and allopatric medicine, and an increased use of nonlocal material goods combined with more local effects, such as deforestation, changes in land rights, less use of firewood and charcoal, and ritual changes. Perhaps a fifth aspect is the lack of trained botanists—or better yet, collaborative teams of biologists, social scientists, and local individuals—present during severe food shortages or shortly afterward. Many descriptions of famine responses simply report the consumption of “wild plants” without specifying what the plants are. This situation is understandable but still regrettable; efforts are focused on immediate aid, not what superficially might appear only to be good for obscure academic studies.

20 | Context of Famine Food Use

If knowledge of plant famine foods is fragile and easily lost, how is it maintained across generations? There are a variety of cultural ways of perpetuating even infrequently used knowledge. Probably the most common and important way of transferring knowledge of famine foods is informal learning from elders by younger generations. Another common way is through traditional legends and historical narratives (e.g., Cove 1978; Cushing 1920; Galt and Galt 1979; Reining 1970). Oral traditions are one of the major sources of information about early and “legendary” famines in southern India. For example, “the Durga Deves famine which began in 1396 in the Deccan also lived in oral tradition” (Murton 1984:72). Cushing (1920:76) provided a Zuni example of transmission of knowledge via cultural narratives passed on through generations that was useful during food shortages: At last despair filled the hearts of the people of Ha′-wi-k’uh. They went forth on the mesas to gather cactus fruit, but even this was scarce. When winter came, the cloud swallower had gone. The god of the ice caves breathed over the whole country, and even in the Valley of the Hot Water great banks of snow fell, such as the oldest men had never seen there. At last the corn was all gone. The people were pitiably poor. They were so weak that they could not hunt through the snow, therefore a great famine spread through the village. At last the people were compelled to gather old bones and grind them for meal, and for meat they toasted the rawhide soles of their moccasins.

Turner (2014:2:254) provides a similar example from northwestern North America: “Famines and food shortages, deeply embedded in the ancient narratives and origin stories, are also known from more recent times, within memories of contemporary elders.” She then considers two stories, one from the Nlaka’pamux tradition and the other from Oowekeeno, illustrating how ethnobotanical knowledge is embedded in important narratives much like the Zuni stories. Turner and Davis (1993:172) quote a Kathlamet narrative from Oregon recorded by Boas (1901) that mentions available famine foods: “The people of mythical times were dying of hunger. They had only sagittaria-roots [Sagittaria sagittata] to eat. They had only small sagittariaroots and skunk-cabbage [Lysichiton americanus] and . . . rush roots [Typha

Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages | 21

latifolia?] to eat.” Oral traditions, therefore, are critical for the perpetuation of knowledge of infrequently used plant foods. An ancient example from one of the earliest civilizations is the Shi Jing (Book of Songs), a famous compilation of hundreds of early songs dating to the first century BC China (Waley 1996). At least 46 economic plants used in northern China are mentioned in these poems (Anderson 1988; Hsuan 1974). While most songs dealt with historical events or social relationships and used plants as metaphors and other literary devices, some parts of the poems have information on useful plants. For example, poem 167 is a lamentation of people caught up in conflict with the Xian-yun, a rival group: We plucked the bracken, plucked the bracken While the young shoots were springing up. On, to go back, go back! The year is ending. We have no house, no home Because of the Xian-yun We cannot rest or bide Because of the Xian-yun.

The second example comes poem 154, which includes a summary of a seasonal diet. Below is the one of the eight stanzas: In the sixth month we eat wild plums and cherries, In the seventh month we boil mallow and beans. In the eighth month we dry the dates, In the tenth month we take the rice To make with it spring wine. So that we may be granted long life. In the seventh month we eat melons, In the eighth month we cut the gourds, In the ninth month we take the seedling hemp, We gather bitter herbs, we cut the ailanthus [tree of heaven] for firewood, that our husbandmen may eat.

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Ritual as a form of oral tradition can be critical for maintaining knowledge through time. The Zuni of New Mexico provide a rich example by ritually embedding ethnobotanical knowledge that passes information on to new generations in two ways. Plants are integral parts of essential ritual paraphernalia, so the location and timing of collection of these plants are critical elements of the yearly ritual cycle, which maintains knowledge of culturally significant plants (Richard Ford, personal communication 1988). For example, Parsons (1939:22) noted that “wild potatoes, wild onions, and cacti were gathered for food, and also wild seeds, some of which still figure in the most sacred bundles of the Zuni.” Likewise, Zuni include knowledge of plants in ritual liturgy. Bunzel (1932:714) translates “Sayataca’s night chant,” part of which is the seeds of the pinon tree, seeds of the juniper, the seeds of the oak tree, the seeds of the peach tree, the seeds of the black wood shrub, the seeds of the first flowering shrub, the seeds of the kapuli shrub, the seeds of the large yucca, the seeds of the branched yucca, and then also the seeds of the wild grasses—the evil smelling weeds, the little grasses, tecukta, kucutsi, o’co, apitalu, sutoka, mololoka, piculiya, small piculiya, hamato, mitaliko, and then also the seeds of those that stand in their doorways, namely the cat-tail, the tall flags, the water weeds, the water cress, the round-leafed weed.

A Chinese example of religion and ritual perpetuating knowledge of famine foods is mountainous Taoist ritual centers, or dioceses (chih), concentrated in central and western China (Schipper 1993). Dating back to at least the second century AD, they developed a corpus of knowledge about unique foods due to religious dietary principles. These mountainous locations were centers for rituals that brought together large numbers of celebrants during the year. During times of food scarcity, they became refugia for affected people. In this case, the value of these locations is due to many factors: ritual cycles, a theology involving food and landscapes, and the locations of ceremonial centers. Despite these ways of perpetuating information about famine food, knowledge of possible famine foods is not a given, even for agricultural or pastoral groups. De Waal (2005) discusses significant variability in knowledge and use of possible edible native plant foods during severe food shortages affect-

Cultural Knowledge and Memory of Food Shortages | 23

ing neighboring communities in the Sudan, some of whom did not know what in the local environment was edible. Similarly, in a study of two communities in northeastern Brazil, of the 17 famine foods recorded, only one, manicoba rubber (Manihot dichotoma), a relative of cassava, was mentioned in both communities (Teixeira do Nacimento et al. 2012). Knowledge of edible foods, including famine foods, is not evenly distributed within communities. It has long been assumed that women, who tend to be gatherers and responsible for household medicinal use, have a greater knowledge of plant foods than men; numerous studies have shown this pattern (e.g., Etkin 2006; Mortimore 1989). However, there are also case studies showing at least equal knowledge of famine food use by men (e.g., Teixeira do Nacimento et al. 2012). We all recognize that food is not just for sustenance. Many scholars have pointed out that the often contrasted Western categories of “medicines” and “foods” are not tightly bounded; rather, these categories overlap (Etkin 2006; Moerman 1998). As Huang notes, “If there is one central theme that runs through the Chinese literature on the relationship between diet and health it is the central concept of ‘I shih thung yuan’ . . . that is to say, ‘medicine and food share a common origin’” (2000:571). Medicinal plant use is an important aspect of Indigenous science beyond simple medicinal use. It also perpetuates knowledge of edible native foods useful during times of food insecurity (Zhou 2014). If medicines are used more frequently than famine foods, a proposition that seems likely, then transfer of the knowledge of famine foods may be partly assisted by use of these plants for medicinal purposes and even other plants used frequently. Many types of healers learn where various medicines are, when to collect them, and how to process them. A systematic study in two areas in Bangladesh documents that of the 34 plants known as famine foods (most of which are leaves, stems, or fruits), 29 (or 85%) also had medicinal uses (Azam et al. 2014). However, cultural memory is only useful if it is used effectively. The history of famine food scholarship and use in China provides an illustrative study. Work during the Ming Dynasty in China (1368–1644) provides an outstanding, if not unique, early example of research and publication on famine foods that is discussed in greater detail in chapter 5. The earliest and best publication dates to the fourteenth century when Zhu Xiao (Zhu Su), a

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prince born in Henan Province, first assembled a two-volume compendium that was then expanded to four volumes by his son with 414 potential famine foods, the Jiuhuang Bencao (Famine relief herbal) (Needham and Gwei-Djen 1986; Read 1946). It is not clear how much this and later famine food treatises were used by Chinese peasants. Only a limited number of famine foods seem to have been used during the famine of 1958–1962, likely the worst famine on record. Furthermore, Chinese governments during this famine did not seem to have systematically or effectively disseminated information about the potentially life-giving range of plants presented in the Jiuhuang Bencao (Frank Dikötter, personal communication 2019). Some plants listed in the Jiuhuang Bencao were still used by Chinese peasants—“much of the traditional practices since the Ming times were kept alive in everyday ‘kitchen knowledge’”—but not, it appears, due to systematic governmental action (Zhou 2012:389). The early Chinese interest in famine foods, particularly during the Ming Dynasty, was especially well developed, and related publications also inspired others outside of China. Early Japanese “famine herbals” were borrowed and even copied from the earlier Chinese treatise (Bartlett and Shohara 1961). Examples include two early eighteenth-century works, Kyūkō yafu and Kyūkō honzō, and subsequent and derivative volumes. There are examples of governments providing information about famine foods as a way of transmitting knowledge of famine foods, but such examples are not as frequent as they should have been, and it is unclear how effective they were. Examples are mentioned in chapter 5, especially in the Netherlands during its 1944 Hunger Winter. A more recent example of governmental action during a food crisis comes from North Korea. According to Natsios, wild foods accounted for 30% of the North Korean famine diet in 1996, including “mushrooms, pine nuts, acorns, grasshoppers, some shoots, and seaweed” (2001:82). The North Korean government encouraged the use of substitute foods: “It was official policy for party cadres to eat one or two meals a day of the substitute food,” and local government mills ground some of these to be mixed with corn and rice flour to extend the food supply (Natsios 2001:82). How useful the government promotion was contrasted with oral traditions handed down for generations is unclear, as discussed by Natsios:

Responses to Severe Food Shortages | 25

Pyongyang produced an instructional video . . . on the harvesting and processes of “substitute food.” In my decade of involvement in famine relief I have never seen such a bizarre manifestation of hunger coping mechanism than this videotape. In shows, for example, how to harvest pond weed, dry it out, and make flour to be mixed with wheat or corn flour as an extender. In one part of the tape, corn husks, oak leaves, and grass are ground up into powder and passed through a noodle machine. The resulting noodles have little nutritional value, cannot be digested by the human system, and in fact cause severe gastrointestinal problems for those hungry enough to eat them [2001:82].

As odd as the contents of this video may seem, the types of alternative foods mentioned in it are quite similar to famine foods eaten elsewhere, as we will see in the following chapters. How the government information articulated with the traditional Korean knowledge of famine foods is not clear. Becker argues that “in a country like Korea that has suffered from periodic famines, many of its citizens actually knew which wild grasses, tree inner barks, and leaves were safe to eat. However, this government misinformation confused people with fatal results” (2005:35). Unfortunately, his volume does not explain specifically how the misinformation confused the populous. Despite the various ways knowledge of famine food is perpetuated across generations, the result of these multiple problems can be seen in the lack of information on famine foods in many, if not most, ethnobotanical studies. Consequently, I think it is fair to assume that we have documented only a fraction of plants eaten in times of need. There is some hope. As several examples in chapter 5 illustrate, information about the use of famine foods can be obtained from survivors even decades after a food shortage.

Some Responses to Severe Food Shortages Other than Use of Famine Foods Famine food use is but one of many possible responses that humans use to cope with severe food shortages (e.g., Den Hartog 1981; Dirks 1980). Understanding the relationships between famine food use and these other responses is useful, because these other actions can affect famine food use

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and vice versa. For example, migration from an affected area due to shortages may require use of unknown foods present in the area of refuge and not present in the original home range. Another example is the common occurrence of commercial price increases of foods during shortages. This obviously affects the types and amounts of food that people can afford to purchase, especially by the poor. There are many responses, or what Colson (1979:21) called “devices,” people use to deal with food shortages: “1) diversification of activities rather than specialization of reliance on a few plants or animals, 2) storage of foodstuffs, 3) storage and transmission of information on what we call famine foods, 4) conversion of surplus into durable valuables which can be stored and traded for food in an emergency, and 5) cultivation of special relationships to allow one to tap resources of other regions.” More recently, Messer (1988) succinctly summarizes eight types of human responses: foraging for a wider diversity of food, shifting to eating less preferred foods, eating less, slaughtering or trading livestock, diversifying occupations, relying more on wider social networks and gifts, selling valuables, or readjusting household size and composition. Responses are not simply a willy-nilly set of actions, but rather seem to have a structure. Elsewhere I suggested that there is a sequence of responses based on the loci of decision-making and degree of household risk, often measured by the number of social groups involved (Minnis 1981, 1985). In short, responses involving more social groups follow less inclusive ones as the food provision problem becomes more severe, because the more social groups that are involved, the less reversible the action and the greater the household risk because of increased potential commitments to others. Similarly, following Jodha (1975), Watts (1983:Figure 7.13), in a study of the Hausa economy, argues for a sequence of responses from the first that have the lowest “commitment of domestic resources” and greatest “reversibility,” such as the use of famine foods, to those with greatest commitment and least reversibility, such as permanent out-migration. As another example, Fleuret (1986, 1989) following Cutler (1984) also argues for a sequence of five “stages” of response among the Taita of sub-Saharan Africa. While the discussion of response sequences and rankings is outside the scope of this volume, it is mentioned to emphasize that there is more agency and forethought to food shortage responses by those affected than is often assumed.

Anticipatory Actions | 27

I will consider famine food use in much greater detail later. Here, other responses are briefly mentioned because they can affect the consumption of foods during shortages. Responses can be divided into two major categories. The first are actions that occur in anticipation of shortages, and the second are behaviors that directly deal with immediate shortages.

Anticipatory Actions These include behaviors that are directly related to lessening the effects of anticipated food shortages. They also include actions that may not be directly due to food scarcity concerns but may have the important effect of reducing the severity of these occasions.

Economic Diversification Traditional farmers throughout the world understand the inherent danger of relying on monoculture and using only one type of field location. Kirkby (1973, 1978), Cancian (1972), and Wilkes (1977) provide examples from just one country, Mexico. Their studies show how farm planning by mestizo and Indian farmers considers hydrology, soil, weather, crop species and varieties, and timing to minimize agricultural risk. Farmers elsewhere, such as India, will select plants best adapted to the problems causing crop failure, such as using drought-tolerant crops (Seavoy 1986). Crops can also be planted as backup crops in case primary crops fail or have significantly reduced yields. Examples include the sweet potato and papaya for the Trobriand Islanders in the Pacific (Malinowski 1935) and cassava among the Gwembe Tonga in Africa (Scudder 1962). Farmers often use introduced, nonlocal crops that fit the local agricultural setting to minimize risk of crop failure. The Chinese state from early on encouraged farmers to use a range of new crops, such as sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), cassava (Manihot esculenta), and maize (Zea mays), that decreased the chances of crop failure (Bray 1984). The Enga of Papua New Guinea have adopted nontraditional frost-tolerant crops including the potato (Solanum tuberosum), pea (Pisum sativum), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), and cabbage (Brassica oleracea) (Waddell 1975). Finding wage labor and participating in market and craft economies are also common

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strategies for diversifying one’s economic base to increase funds to purchase foodstuffs.

Storage Annegers (1973) found a correlation between storage and the absence of hunger periods in parts of Africa. Storage, like economic diversification, must be a near universal strategy among human groups including many hunter-gatherers. The Hopi in the U.S. Southwest try to maintain a two- to four-year supply of maize given that they live in an environment with limited precipitation and significant year-to-year variation in available moisture for crops (e.g., Bradfield 1971). A complex example of storage would be the early Chinese bureaucracies that were concerned with storage to ease problems of food shortages. These included governmental granaries at different scales, such as “ever-normal granaries” at provincial and village levels, and other public granaries as well as private and charity granaries (Bray 1984; Will et al. 1991). The concern for sufficient storage to meet food shortages can be seen in a text dating to 139 BC: “On average the state should be able to save a year’s surplus from every three years’ crops . . . so that despite natural disasters the people will not suffer misery or destruction. A state which does not have [at least] nine years’ stores is said to have insufficient food, one which does not have six years’ supplies is said to be in peril, and one which does not have three years’ food is said to be in desperate straits” (from the Huainanzi [Huai Nan Tzu] quoted in Bray 1984:379). There are, however, limits to the effectiveness of storage. Foods with high moisture content, especially those in humid regions, are vulnerable to rot. Traditional storage technologies are also susceptible to predation by rodents and insects. It has been estimated that loss due to predation on stored foods is at least 18%–20% (Sharma et al. 2017). Many Chinese granaries required annual disbursement of a percentage of stored grain due to fear of spoilage (Will et al. 1991). Bulk foodstuffs can require significant space. Finally, stored food is also vulnerable to theft or expropriation. Neighbors may well expect reciprocal access to food stores. Some of the most devastating famines of the twentieth century were made far worse when government agents expropriated stored food from rural populations, often to feed cities. This was the case for the Ukrainian Holodomor and the Kazakh famine of 1919–1922

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when the Soviet Union’s policy of prodrazvyorstka confiscated or underpaid for rural food stores to feed cities, and this process has happened elsewhere (e.g., Applebaum 2017; Cameron 2018; Dikötter 2010; Keneally 2011; Kindler 2018; Zhou 2012, 2013).

Social Banking Quite likely one of the most reliable and valuable traditional responses by peoples throughout the world to severe food shortages has been social banking, maintaining important social relationships that can offer support during food shortages. There are a number of ways to create and maintain such relationships, such as developing strong, ongoing economic connections, recognizing fictive kinship, and encouraging exogamy. The participants can offer material support as well as offer temporary refugia in time of need. In the absence of efficient transportation, it may be easier move people to food rather than the reverse. The town chief of Acoma (a Puebloan community in New Mexico) expressed the logic of social banking clearly: “The people of Zuni are coming. They have no crops. They are coming to work for us. Some day we might have to go to them when our crops are small. We shall treat them as we wish to be treated when our crops fail” (Parsons 1939:111). There are many other examples. The San of the Kalahari Desert have a network of social relationships, hxaro, that they can draw on in case of problems, including food shortages (Wiessner 1982). Alcorn (1984:112) points out, as have many others, that the ritual/economic compadrazgo system of Guatemala “can provide aid during famines and disasters.” Ford (1972) has shown that ritual mechanisms that include food sharing among the Tewa of the U.S. Southwest increase when stored foods are at their lowest. Also, having different economies—such as animal husbandry versus farming, highland farming versus lowland farming, or being at a far but accessible distance— should increase the value of a refuge because of the reduced chance that the factors affecting food shortage in one area will affect a broader region or group with a different economy. Social banking can appear to be simply an economic relationship, but it is more than that. Social banking can be problematic. It may only be effective in limited shortages or where the causes of the food shortages are more geographically limited than the social networks. If everyone suffers, then social banking has its limitations. Sahlins (1972) suggests that intergroup sharing increases during less

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severe shortages, but as the effects of the food provisioning become more pronounced, sharing decreases. Consistent with this idea, more generous sharing (general and balanced reciprocity) among the So of East Africa decreases during times of scarcity (Laughlin 1974). Similarly, analyses of jajmani patronclient relationships in India shows that reciprocal relationships during normal times become less helpful to the poorer participants during shortages (Epstein 1967; Greenough 1980; Henderson 1988; Torry 1987). Social banking is not limited to hunter-gatherers or small-scale farmers. Urban dwellers in Uganda insure “self-reliance in food through greater dependence of rural networks” (Obbo 1985:277). The Dutch and Russian examples in chapter 5 document how access to rural resources was lifesaving for urbanities, although these two examples document economic exchange more than long-term social relationships.

Economic Specialization Contrary as it may first appear, one way to ameliorate food shortages is economic specialization. This is most effective with the presence of market economies. Political economists have long and often pointed out that food shortages can occur due to lack of access to food because of low purchasing power, not necessarily the lack of available food. Rich people generally are less likely than the poor to starve during food shortages. If economic specialization can provide more money, then access to food is increased through trade or purchase. This strategy is less effective with foragers and village farming communities with minimal access to markets and when market circumstances reduce the chance of wealth accumulation.

Mitigation Responses These are actions that occur during food shortages and are directly used to lessen the effects of the food provisioning problem.

Changes in Consumption of Common Foods Obviously, the focus of this volume is a change in food consumption, focused on the use of famine foods. However, other changes in food consumption can occur. First, food intake can be reduced with smaller portions or fewer

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meals for at least some of the population. People who buy their food primarily from markets can change what foods they buy, purchase fewer items, or acquire less expensive foods, as did the Hausa of northern Nigeria during food shortages in the 1970s (Mortimore 1989). The reduction in food intake is a response to annual and anticipated hunger seasons where people simply reduce their consumption and conserve energy (Hitchcock et al. 1989). Obviously, this only works for shortages that the affected are confident will be short-term. The !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert as well as the Tyua of northern Botswana tend to lose body weight during hunger seasons (Hitchcock 1988; Lee 1968, 1979; Wilmsen 1978). Pumé women, members of a foraging group on the savanna of Venezuela, lose an average of 8% body weight during hunger seasons (Kramer and Greaves 2017).

Ritual Responses The world is a moral and supernatural universe for most peoples of the world, so it is not surprising that extreme events, such as food shortages, are viewed through the lens of religion, as discussed previously. Two examples should suffice to illustrate the relationship between rituals and food shortages. As mentioned earlier, the Wola of highland Papua New Guinea experience food shortages occasionally that they attribute to Horwar Saliyn, a white-skinned woman (Sillitoe 1993). To appease her, the Wola conduct a series of rituals called iyshponda. Garnsey (1988:144) argues for the ancient Mediterranean that the rich distributed food through religious ceremonies that both helped feed the poor and strengthened the religious systems. Both of these functions help maintain social stability and thus lessen threats to elite control. A third example, the Puebloans of the U.S. Southwest, was discussed in greater detail earlier in this chapter. Migration Migration is a common outcome of famines. People often move in search of food. They can move as individuals, families, and even villages. The distance moved also varies greatly. People can move relatively short distances within a region to a point of refuge within communities with established relationships or areas where food resources are known not to have been

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affected by whatever reduced food availability in the area they left. Hewa households in Papua New Guinea, as an example, split into small foraging groups during the 1996–1997 drought (Haley 2001). Contrary to the popular image of famine migrations as “disorganized fleeing of starving victims,” though such events do happen, migration in the face of food shortages can be a thought-out action because it is often related to social banking (Waddell 1975:250). Refugia often are those with whom one has economic, social, or ritual relationships. As this is being written during a pandemic, millions of out-of-work Indians are migrating out of cites to their family villages where food and other support is more likely to be available. Migration can be short-lived or permanent. During the 1949 famine in Malawi, many people migrated to the highlands despite the difficulty and danger of the migration. As Vaughn notes, “Whilst travelling, they lived on wild foods which they gathered from the bush, and of which there seems to have been a communal knowledge” (1987:33). When frost kills their crops, the Fringe Enga of Papua New Guinea move temporarily to lowland villages who are looking for allies against rival villages (Waddell 1975). The Hopi migrated to Zuni and the Eastern Pueblos during the famines of 1777–1779 and 1862 (Parsons 1939). Likewise, the Tohono O’odham (formerly Papago) of the U.S./Mexico borderlands when very hungry would travel to the neighboring Akimel O’Odham (formerly Pima) to conduct a “begging dance.” The Akimel O’Odham then were expected to contribute wheat to the Tohono O’Odham (Castetter and Bell 1942). Migration can be permanent and even be encouraged by governments. An Gorta Mór (the Irish Potato Famine) affected English-speaking countries far from Ireland through massive and permanent out-migration and affected Irish demography for more than a century (Ó Gráda 1993). This emigration was encouraged by the authorities to reduce the number of tenant farming families that were viewed as a hindrance as the economic base of rural Ireland changed. No doubt many readers are where they are because of their ancestors’ emigration from Ireland or other places that experienced severe food shortages. Migration is only effective, however, if there is a place to go—a place that has sufficient food—and a way to get there. One of the most common movements today is from affected rural areas to cities or vice versa depending on which locations suffer the most. There are

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many examples of poor rural individuals and families moving to cities either temporarily or permanently. Calcutta (now Kolkata) was a destination for starving peasants during the Bengal famine of 1943 (e.g., Bhatia 1967; Uppal 1984). In other cases, such as the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944 discussed in chapter 5, urban dwellers trekked, sometime for weeks, into the countryside to barter with farmers for food (van de Zee 1998).

Demographic Changes The obvious demographic effect of the most severe food famines is death, especially of vulnerable cohorts such as the poor, young, old, and infirm. Increased deaths may reduce the number of people to feed, but it also decreases labor to acquire food. Plus, the effects of food shortages can reduce fertility among survivors and have impacts long after the end of the food shortage (e.g., Bongaarts and Cain 1982; Dyson and Ó Gráda 2002; Hugo 1984). Selling Goods, Oneself, and Debt Famine narratives often describe those affected selling their goods or services to pay for food. Nearly every description of modern severe famine describes how families sell valuables to buy food. In addition to material items, “goods” of value can include selling oneself in prostitution or labor and selling one’s children, which reduces the food needed in a household as well as bringing in money. During famines, some Navajo would sell children to the Hopi or just leave them with Hopi households (Parsons 1939). The Gwembe Tonga families were allowed to sell land during severe shortages to raise funds even though selling land was not permitted by lineages during normal times (Scudder 1962). There are problems with relying on markets to distribute food during shortages. As Sen (1981) and Ó Gráda (2009), among many others, document, markets can be ineffective as a response to food shortages. The price of food often rises and the value of other goods decreases. Hoarding by merchants waiting for higher prices is commonly reported. There may not be adequate food in markets. D’Souza (1988) reported that during one food shortage in Mozambique some markets had only famine foods for sale. Furthermore, markets are only useful if those suffering have some things of value to sell. The poor often do not. This is not just an academic consideration. A

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laissez-faire, market-oriented ideology that was the basis for the reluctance to use “gratuitous relief ” was common among British administrators in Ireland and India (e.g., Gray 2006; Mukherjee 2019; Woodham-Smith 1962). Incurring debt to buy food and supplies during food shortages is common, especially in market economies but not limited to them. The problem with debt, of course, is that it comes with the expectation that the loan must be repaid. Interest rates and collateral requirements can be high during food shortages, increasing the chance of losing one’s essential resources (like farmland) and even livelihood.

Theft Numerous chroniclers and survivors of severe famines have observed that normal social relations and mores are often abandoned. Bourke (1988) mentions several incidents of theft in Papua New Guinea during food shortages. Theft of food is common, even among close family members. People also hide foodstuffs to reduce theft, lessen reciprocal obligations, and avoid expropriation by authorities. A major problem with theft is that it goes both ways and can fray social relations that need to be reestablished once the food shortage ends. In addition, there are risks with theft in that it can encourage retaliatory violence. Consumption of Nonplant “Food” Plants are not the only famine foods. Basically, anything edible has been eaten during times of severe food shortages, including nonplant foods. Livestock, pets, zoo animals, and pests such as rodents, insects, and other invertebrates have all provided sustenance during times of food deprivation. For circumpolar groups, which rely most heavily on meat and fish, a large number of famine foods are animals (Eidlitz 1969). Non-biotic materials even have been eaten despite the fact that they provide no significant nutritional value. Geophagia is not an uncommon phenomenon across the globe but can be magnified during food shortages. In the Chinese famine caused by the Great Leap Forward, 10,000 peasants in Quxian, Sichuan Province, consumed an estimated 250,000 kg (or over 550,000 lbs.) of “immortal clay” (guanyin tu) that supposedly dulls hunger

Community Organizations and Responses | 35

pangs, and in another location an additional 190,000 kg (nearly 420,000 lbs.) were ingested even though eating this clay caused serious gastrointestinal distress, severe constipation, and even some deaths (Dikötter 2010; Zhou 2012). Cannibalism is the most “spectacular” and morbidly fascinating response to starvation, but it can simply be considered an extreme example of using an alternative meat source. Cannibalism is common during the severest food shortages. There are records of murder and then cannibalism during severe famines (Becker 1997). More common, it appears, is the consumption of the already dead, including exhuming burials. Consumption of animals, including humans, during food shortages is outside the focus of this volume and has been discussed in many books.

Community Organizations and Responses to Food Shortages One of the most salient factors for understanding famine food use is the nature and organization of societies that differ greatly not only across cultures but also through time. Since human organization and food use has changed dramatically through time, we should expect that the uses of plant food during food shortages have changed as well. The case study from the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico considered in chapter 4 illustrates such a change. The organizing principle for chapters 3–5 are three very general types of human societies with 14 case studies. The great diversity of the thousands of human societies present today and the greater number of cultures found throughout human history will be divided for the purposes of our discussion into three major categories: (1) nonagricultural societies, (2) village and rural agricultural communities, and (3) urbanized nations, because the use of famine foods tends to be different in each. I do not want to be overly reductionist, because there is significant diversity within each category and some overlap between the three; nonetheless, there have been transformational changes in famine food use among them.

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F i g u re 1 Locations of major case studies discussed in the text.

Nonagricultural Societies The first type is rare today but was far more common in the past. For the majority of humanity, before the advent of agriculture beginning around 10 millennia ago, human groups lived without agriculture, although they manipulated environments and resources to varying degrees. Today, foraging groups are a small percentage of humanity, often are located in the most remote locations, and many are involved with markets and neighboring farmers or pastoralists (Kelly 2013). The mixed nature of modern foragers offers opportunities to overcome food shortages that may not have been available in the past. The Pumé of Venezuela diversify their economy during food shortages by small-scale cultivation of bitter manioc, which evens out variation in the availability of wild foods (Greaves and Kramer 2014). This cultivation would not have been available in times when crops had not yet been domesticated. Chapter 3 discusses four examples from different parts of the world.

Rural Agricultural Communities What sets these types of societies apart from nonagricultural ones is the presence of domesticated crops and intensive or extensive farming. Farming

Urbanized Nations During Peace and War | 37

not only changes the diet itself but alters a wide range of environmental and cultural relationships. Examples include increase in certain plants such as weeds, changed seasonal labor requirements, ownership of resources, and higher population densities. There is enormous diversity among agricultural communities. Some are embedded in market-dependent food supply systems, whereas others rely on more local subsistence (Hays 1978). The degree of involvement with provincial and national markets profoundly affects responses to food shortages. For example, a study in rural Zimbabwe did not show an increase in wild food use during droughts, because the affected populations had access to market-based responses, such as wage labor and governmental aid programs (Zinyama et al. 1990). Traditional agricultural societies can be largely egalitarian without any formal centralized decision-making by elites or leaders, whereas others have clear and strong hierarchical social, economic, and political structures. This can affect responses to food shortages. It is common for elites to have central food stores that can be used in times of need to feed the population. The Hausa of northern Nigeria just south of the Sahel have a saying: “The Emir never ran short of food” (Watts 1983:139). How much of these stores are available in times of need to the local non-elites varies but is an important variable in understanding food availability in traditional agricultural populations with elites. Several examples are considered in chapter 4.

Urbanized Nations During Peace and War The vast majority of humans today are tightly integrated into nations, which affects the use of famine foods in several ways, and there is every reason to think this trend will continue into the future. For rural communities, nonlocal factors become more important, including governmental policies and connections with national and global markets. Nonlocal factors can be important in some indirect and unexpected ways. For example, resource extraction can alter ecosystems, changing or reducing the availability of traditional famine foods. Second, the wider connections with more distant regions can offer refuge, often migration to urban centers. Clear and often stark differences occur among classes in nations, and this is related to the use of foods during shortages. The most obvious is that elites

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normally have more recourses to survive food provisioning events with more access to food and better quality foodstuffs. The relationships between status and food can be unexpected. An unexpected and fascinating example is propaganda surrounding Mao Zedong’s personal food preferences during the Great Leap Forward famine of 1958–1962 (Lu 2015). As a result, two plants said to be Mao’s favorite foods, sweet potatoes and stinky tofu (aromatic fermented soybean curd), became more widely consumed foods. Urban settings affect how city dwellers deal with food shortages. There are more people in denser settings. On one hand, they may have access to aid efforts because of often better infrastructure and logistics. And those in charge can favor urban communities during food shortages. This is not a new phenomenon, as classical authors in the Mediterranean region described how urban populations had access to better foodstuffs as the expense of rural communities (Garnsey 1988). Referring to the Chinese famine of 1958–1962, Yang concluded that “throughout the Great Famine, villagers starved so that urban dwellers could live” (2012:340). On the other hand, the access to traditional famine foods is reduced in several ways. First, the urban biomass and diversity of plant foods can be lower than in rural settings, and there are more people in densely concentrated settings having to compete for the famine foods that are found in the urban landscape.

Context of Famine Food Use Use of famine foods is a universal action people take when faced with food insecurity and shortages. At a basic level, studying the use of famine foods documents the agency of those dealing with food shortages, rather than the common popular image of hapless victims simply waiting for outside relief to arrive. But the universality of famine food use does not mean understanding famine foods is simple. Severe food shortages and peoples’ responses are contingent on local biological, cultural, and political contexts. Despite how important famine foods have been to humanity, there are issues with the study of these important resources. The first and greatest issue is underreporting of their use in the world’s ethnobotany and economic

Context of Famine Food Use | 39

botany literature. This problem is likely to become more pronounced with economic development and increased urbanism. A second issue is the fact that descriptions of famine food use often are minimal. It is often just the list of the plants, maybe descriptions of what parts are used, and, if you’re fortunate, how they are prepared. The historical and cultural context of use is not often explained. The underreporting of famine food use is understandable. Under extreme conditions and suffering, aid efforts do and should take priority over what may appear to be overly academic studies. However, understanding both biological and cultural factors are essential for a fuller understanding of famine food use and how this information may be helpful to better design efforts to reduce the severity of food shortages. The next chapter delves into the types of plants used as famine food. This is followed by specific case studies that outline the complex and contingent relationships between plants and people under the most stressful of situations for humanity. While each case study is unique, there are some overall commonalities depending on the general economic, demographic, and organizational nature of the societies. However, some case studies are far more detailed than others, which is largely due to the fact that there are few examples of studies that combine detailed botanical data and plant identifications with an understanding of the cultural context of their use.

Famine Foods

Two

Characteristics and Types

In forests there are many half-wild people who feed on mushrooms, moss, and roots. On the roads one can often see peasant families fleeing from the countryside on horse wagons. —Polish witness to the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933 (cited in Bruski 2014)

T

here are number of ways to define famine food. However defined, it must meet two simple yet essential criteria. First, it has to be edible to some degree, and second, it has to be available when more preferred foods are unobtainable in the needed quantities. In many cases, famine foods are barely edible for a variety of biological reasons. They can have very limited nutritional value; they can require extensive and laborious processing to make edible; they can have unpleasant or unhealthy side effects or taste bad; they can be available in small quantities not worth collecting and preparing during more abundant times. Famine foods can also be less preferred consumables for cultural reasons. For example, they may not be considered to be proper food for symbolic or religious reasons. They can be present in locations unsafe to travel for collection. They may simply also be unfamiliar. Examples of the latter appear in four booklets prepared for the Allied military during World War II in the Pacific (Australian Land Headquarters 2013; Cranwell et al. 1943; Merrill 1943; Military Intelligence Services-X 2013). The plants listed in the booklets were emergency (famine foods) for the one group of stranded Allied soldiers and sailors but not for local populations who used many of the plants as normal rations. Another extreme example of the changing status of plant edibility due to cultural factors is the case of two plants, algae and wild cassava,

Major Types of Famine Foods | 41

that are traditional hunger plants in Laos but have become “heritage foods in gourmet boutiques in Europe and North America” (Van Esterik 2006:83). The status of famine foods is clearly as much about cultural, social, and historical contexts as about biological characteristics. The second criterion, being available when normal rations are not, is especially interesting, because these foods are ecologically resilient resources. We might also be able to predict what foods are likely to be famine foods. Famine foods need to be resistant to the factors that cause the lack of availability of more preferred foods. However, this does not mean that famine foods are not also affected by frost or other factors that affect availability of normally eaten foods, it just means that they are affected to a lesser degree. If droughts are a primary cause of famines, then we might expect famine foods to be those especially drought resistant, such as xerophytic plants, tuberous plants, or plants in habitats such as riverine settings or oases less affected by drought. If tropical storms are a primary problem, we could expect famine foods to be those least affected by hurricanes and cyclones, such as those found away from storm surges. The concept of “availability” also implies knowledge of food preparation. We might expect famine foods to be those most easily integrated into food processing and consumption traditions and infrastructure. For example, it would be logical to propose that naturally present bulbs, tubers, and roots are preferred famine foods for those groups with cuisines dependent on root crops. We might also expect native grasses and other seed-bearing plants to be preferred famine foods in communities whose diet and processing infrastructure are focused on seeds such as cereals. Arguing against this is the fact that most cuisines use a range of plant foods requiring different types of preparation. The specific case studies to come will show that such simple expectations are often unrealized. In the end, people under severe food stress will eat what is available.

Major Types of Famine Foods Defining famine foods is not as straightforward as it might appear, because there is no standard definition. As an example, Eidlitz (1969:129), in a comprehensive summary of “emergency food” use among circumpolar groups,

42 | Famine Foods

sets two criteria for these foods: “food not sufficiently nutritional if one has to live on it alone” and “foods that are in fact sufficiently nutritional but which the group in question does not regard as proper food.” In short, she recognized both biological (nutritional adequacy) and cultural (preference) factors in defining foods used during shortages. More commonly, however, famine foods are characterized in two other ways. Some view these mainly as food eaten during food shortages, and others limit the term to food eaten only during food shortages. I prefer the first, broader, definition, because it expands our understanding of what people eat during food shortages by focusing on the entire range of foods and the contexts of their use. One issue with limiting the definition of famine foods to those consumed only during food shortages is that the use of food is dynamic. The different roles food plants can play is illustrated by the use of sago (Metroxylon spp.) in the Pacific islands (Connell and Hammett 1978). On the island of Bougainville, likely a soon-to-be nation near Papua New Guinea, sago has a complicated history of use that documents its changing dietary role, including use as a famine food. For some Bougainvillan groups, sago palm starch is a famine food used when crops are destroyed by cyclones, whereas for other communities it is a normal foodstuff, and among still others it is more of a supplementary food. Therefore, sago palm starch is not by its biological nature simply a famine food, although it tends to require more work per calorie obtained than taro and sweet potatoes and is not an esteemed food. The cultural and economic history of the communities using it is a critical factor in its use. A general decrease in the use of sago palm starch is island-wide, as well as in other areas of the Pacific, except in upland areas where its use has increased. The authors suggest the continued use among some groups is due to the fact that their fields are more vulnerable to being flooded, so there is a continued need for backup foods given the greater frequency of food insecurity. They suggest that as relief foods become more common, the use of sago in these sago-producing upland areas is likely to decrease. Sago’s role as a food source has changed over time, and this is not unique to this plant. To help think more about what a famine food is, we turn to a study in northwestern North America. Turner and Davis (1993:176) recognize three types of famine foods: “regular foods whose use became more important

Relief Supplies | 43

under certain circumstances, largely due to extended availability; (2) alternative or secondary foods, used minimally or casually in normal times, but used in larger quantities in times of food scarcity; and (3) hunger suppressants and thirst quenchers, generally used during short periods of food and water deprivation.” No doubt these distinctions fit most other discussions of famine food use. However, their tables list the plants in four categories by dividing type 2 into alternative foods and resources consumed only during times of extreme hunger. This is a very sensible approach, but it is difficult to use for this comparative examination of famine food use worldwide, because sources do not always provide adequate information about how and when these foods are used. Looking at the lists of famine foods in numerous publications, there is no clear way to systematize the specific types of uses with the information available, so I will accept what authors of the studies considered famine foods. Expanding on Turner and Davis and others, the range of famine food types will be divided into nine major categories: relief supplies, increased and novel crop usage, seed stock, animal feed, agricultural refuse, native food plants, tabooed foods, native plants only used during shortages, and unknown or mimic famine plant foods. The last two categories are the ones that most would consider true famine foods.

Relief Supplies Today, the most widely reported famine foods are relief commodities often derived from far distant sources and distributed by various international, governmental, and charitable organizations. One cannot overestimate how important these resources are. However, there have been and continue to be controversies with relief supplies going back over a hundred years. There were major debates among British policy makers during the Irish Potato Famine and the many Indian famines overseen by British colonial administrators. Some administrators saw aid efforts focused on food distribution (termed “gratuitous relief ” in Ireland and India) as encouraging dependency. Rather, they emphasized a laissez-faire economic doctrine concentrating on the role of markets and also on large-scale wage labor projects to alleviate food shortages (e.g.,

44 | Famine Foods

Bhatia 1967; Gray 2006; Kinealy 1997). More recently, some scholars and activists have offered critiques of famine relief efforts (e.g., Rosin et al. 2012; Schuftan 1989). There are several potential cultural problems with relief foods. All foods are not equal, and there are many examples of unfamiliar relief foods causing problems. During the 1967 famine in northeastern India, one of the major relief foods, milo (Sorghum bicolor), accounted for a third of the food during the famine and was unfamiliar to the local population, resulting at first in widespread complaints of gastrointestinal problems (Singh 1975). During the Irish Potato Famine, the British administration ordered maize from the United States as a major relief food, but its preparation was unfamiliar to Irish peasants and milling technology was not well suited to it, thus reducing its effectiveness as famine aid (Woodham-Smith 1962). An additional potential issue with food relief is the difficultly in transporting it to where it is needed. During the Bengal famine of 1943, the disruption of transportation infrastructure due to World War II exacerbated the famine.

Increased and Novel Crop Usage One of the most common famine foods is normally eaten foodstuffs whose use increases during food shortages, particularly damaged crops that are likely to become inedible. During the Irish Potato Famine, one of the first actions taken by Irish peasants was to harvest the fungus-infested potatoes and eat as many as possible before they completely rotted (Woodham-Smith 1962). The Fringe Enga, similarly, consumed sweet potatoes injured by frost that were still edible before they rotted completely (Waddell 1972, 1975). A similar response is to eat crops in uncommon ways. Unripe foods such as cereal grains and fruits are often eaten. So, too, leaves of crops normally grown for other parts like roots or fruits are frequently eaten during time of distress. An example of the use of crops in an unfamiliar manner is the development of “artificial rice” in India in the 1940s. Ersatz rice was developed from cassava flour, but it met strong resistance from consumers and was soon abandoned (Siegel 2018). Chapter 5 provides other examples of organizations and governments developing unique foods based on common

Seed Stock | 45

food plants. Use of agricultural refuse is another novel crop usage that is considered below.

Seed Stock A response that can seriously affect future food supplies is consumption of seeds, fruits, and tubers saved for future planting. In short, ones eats the future, because there is no future if one starves to death. Examples in chapter 5 illustrate this use.

Animal Feed There are numerous examples of people eating what was normally considered animal feed. Galen, the second-century Greek scholar, discusses how peasants during food shortages would eat acorns stored in pits used normally to feed pigs during food shortages: “Before that [meaning a famine], mast like this was pig food. . . . At the start of winter they slaughtered the pigs first and ate them; after that they opened the pits and, having suitably prepared the mast in various ways, they ate it” (translated by Powell 2003:97– 98). Regarding food shortages in England, “food substitution—trading down in grains and making use of grain substitutes, such as lentils and beans usually used as animal feed—was perhaps the most common adaptation” (Walter 2019). In China, a cultivated black bean (heidou) normally fed to horses was also a human food during shortages, perhaps partly due to the fact that it was one of the most drought-tolerant beans in northern China (Li 2007). A green algae (Chlorella sp.) was first used during the Chinese famine of 1958–1962 as a substitute feed for pigs but then became a famine food for people as shortages worsened (Hua 2012).

Agricultural Refuse One of the most commonly described responses by urban populations is consumption of agricultural refuse. As considered in the last chapter, there is reason to suggest that some agricultural refuse has more useful nutritional value than many might expect. In fact, it seems that agricultural refuse has

46 | Famine Foods

become very important famine food in nations with large urban centers and high population densities. There are many descriptions of maize cobs, grain chaff, and other refuse being used as food sources even though they have very little or no nutritive value. Of the 14 famine foods listed as having been eaten by the villagers in Shandong Province quoted earlier, a majority (9/14) were agricultural refuse. Maxim Gorky pointed out that in 1918 Russia, Muscovites used “bread that was half straw, herring heads, cotton-cakes, and the like” (cited in Ó Gráda 2009:233). A final example is efforts by the Japanese government just before the end of World War II to use agricultural refuse to augment the insufficient 1946 food supply “with 150,000 metric tons of ‘food substitutes’: stems and leaves of sweet potatoes, mulberry leaves, acorns, residue of starch manufacture, seaweeds, leaves of radishes, mugworts, residue from apple and grass presses, pumpkin seeds, water oats, arrowroot, silkworms, and locusts were dried, ground, and mixed with wheat flour. Even though some of these things were known to be indigestible, the mixture was used as ‘stomach filler’ for ‘the underprivileged urban population’” (Frank 1999:351).

Native Plants Many responses to food shortages involve using native plant foods normally eaten but often in a different way or at a more intense level during shortages. For example, Watts noted that for the northern Nigeria Hausa, “The foods that came to be particularly significant, such as the kuka (baobab leaves), were usually part of the Hausa diet but simply came to occupy an expanded role in local consumption” (1983:117). One must be careful not to define famine foods simply as native edible plants. Some seem to assume that natural supplementary foods or “wild” native foods are the same as famine foods. Harris and Mohammed (2003:28) succinctly make this point in a study of uncultivated plant food use in northern Nigeria: “There does not seem to be a clear boundary between wild foods and famine foods.” Muller and Almedom (2008) make the same point when they argue that the distinction between the category “famine foods” and a related category “traditional vegetables” in Boumba, Niger, were indistinct: “Therefore, instead of a discreet domain of plants that are used in times of

Tabooed Foods | 47

famine, these results seem to indicate that ‘famine foods’ is not a salient cultural domain, but a subset of some ‘traditional vegetables’ which is primarily conceptualized as a vibrant part of the local cuisine” (Muller and Almedom 2008:604). In addition to collecting edible parts directly, there are records of people raiding seeds cached by granivorous animals, such as rodents and insects. The Hausa, for example, would collect small seeds from insect nests (Mortimore 1989).

Tabooed Foods Numerous potentially edible resources are not normally consumed because of religious or cultural taboos. There are records of people not eating these, even during severe food shortages (e.g., Cerulli 1964; Honigmann 1954). Some may die or suffer by adhering to these norms; for example, “caste Hindu in India’s nineteenth-century famines could not be persuaded to abandon their customary taboos and prejudices against eating beef ” (Arnold 1988:8). In another Indian case, when an individual was asked why she did not eat substitute foods that her neighbors ate, she replied that she was not taught how to cook them because of her higher status (Brown 1991). While trying not to be too cynical, I suspect the exception to the general rule is that people will eat whatever they can when confronted with severe starvation. Examples go back centuries; Garnsey, referring to the ancient Greek city of Edessa in AD 499–500, writes, “People actually dared to enter the holy places and for sheer hunger to eat the consecrated bread as if it had been common bread” (1988:4). Even orthodox Brahmin caste people “were seen stealing scraps from our dogs” (Srivastava 1968:36). Das (1949:9) comments that hungry people during the Bengal famine of 1943 “did not think to inquire about the caste or religion of the beneficent providers of food.” Regarding the Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888–1892, Pankhurst notes that the crisis “resulted in the adoption of numerous ‘unnatural practices,’ including the eating of traditionally forbidden—and disgusting—foods, among them wild fruits and roots from the forest . . . [and] grain found in animals’ excrement” (Pankhurst 1989:143; emphasis mine). Malinowski (1935:164) describes an example from Trobriand Islands: “At times of real famine, the chief would,

48 | Famine Foods

surreptitiously at least, forgo their taboos and eat bush-pig, wallaby, and the despised fruit of the noku, and other abominations.” Describing his experiences during a famine in Guangxi province, a Chinese Muslim recalls, “To survive I ate everything. As Muslims, our religion forbids us to eat pork. But in those days, I even ate pork. It tasted so good to me” (Zhou 2013:265).

Native Plants Used Only During Shortages This is the category most would think of as classic famine foods. These are native plants used only during food shortages. Many of these require substantial processing, have disagreeable taste, or can cause health issues. The 14 case studies discussed in chapters 3–5 provide many specific examples of such plants.

Unknown and Mimic Plants When people move into a new area, they encounter new plants. For example, Chinese immigrants to Manchuria came largely from northern China. Most “wild vegetables” (60%, 52 of 85) used by the Chinese in Manchuria were the same species as those found in northern China, so they were wellknown (Baranov 1967). The remaining 33 were new to the Chinese with 20 of these found in the forests of Manchuria, which are different from the forests in northern China. So the new immigrants needed to determine which were edible and how to prepare them. Learning what is edible in a new flora during a food shortage must happen more quickly than at times of food abundance. This process of learning about new potential famine foods is not perfect. The category of unknown food plants is not well-studied, including familiar plants whose preparation as food is not known. It includes “mimic” plants that look like familiar edible foods as well as completely unfamiliar ones. One would expect that the latter category would only be used as a last resort given the potential danger. There are numerous examples of what appear to have been people becoming sick or even dying after eating unknown or mimic plants. Medical records from the Siege of Leningrad document an increase in food poisonings, in many cases from eating poison plants and

Famine Foods by Plant Families | 49

plant products such as henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) roots, tung (Vernicia fordii) oil, and calabar (Physostigma venenosum) beans (Dzeniskevich 2005). The problem of food poisoning from eating alternative foods is well illustrated a study in Sichuan Province during the Great Leap Forward famine that found 40 alternative foods were, in fact, poisonous (Hua 2012). A 1960 report by the Bureau of Grains in Fujian Province during the same famine pointed out how thousands were sickened and 294 people died due to food poisoning. Of these, 2,000 were ill and 286 died from eating inappropriately prepared cassava (Zhou 2012). During the same famine, “a doctor who worked in one city said that [the] hospital emergency department was filled with people who had eaten poisonous wild vegetables” (Becker 1997:208). A rash of deaths following the relocation of the Gwembe Tonga to new and unfamiliar territory may have been due to people foraging poisonous plants that they thought were similar to edible wild foods in their homeland (Scudder 1971). A refugee from North Korea said that her sister died from “eating wild foods she did not realize were poisonous” (Natsios 2001:81). Some deaths during the Finnish famine of the 1860s may well have been due to the toxicity of inadequately cooked emergency foods, most likely of water plant roots (Airaksinen et al. 1986). There were six confirmed deaths due to eating wild plants during a drought in Papua New Guinea (Vile 2013). By one estimate, 35% of the approximately 500,000 people who died during the Brazilian famine of 1876–1879 did so due to consumption of “poisonous or harmful foods” (Davis 2001:114). This last estimate of Brazilian deaths from eating poisonous foods seems suspiciously high. Nevertheless, knowledge of what is safe to eat and how to safely prepare it is not always perfect, and its lack can have fatal consequences.

Famine Foods by Plant Families Despite problems obtaining information about famine foods, Freedman (2019) has assembled the most comprehensive and impressive list of plants used as famine foods, thankfully available online. The result of his extraordinary effort is a list of nearly 1,600 species in 190 plant families used as famine foods throughout the world. While this database surely reflects only a fraction of

50 | Famine Foods

Ta b l e   2 Plant Familiesa with the Most Species Listed as Famine Foods Family Bean (Fabaceae) Sunflower (Asteraceae) Grass (Poaceae) Rose (Rosaceae) Arum (Araceae) Squash (Cucurbitaceae) Mint (Lamiaceae) Yam (Dioscoreaceae) Amaranth (Amaranthaceae) Carrot (Apiaceae) Lily (Liliaceae) Mallow (Malvaceae) Mulberry (Moraceae) Madder (Rubiaceae) Mustard (Brassicaceae) Spurge (Euphorbiaceae) Nightshade (Solanaceae) Milkweed (Asclepiadaceae)

Number of Species 168 72 72 69 46 38 35 34 34 32 32 29 28 26 24 23 22 21

Source: Freedman 2019. a Families with 20 or more species.

foods used during shortages, it is nonetheless the best place to start while looking for broad patterns in the use of these foods. How are famine foods distributed across the plant kingdom? As would be expected, famine foods are not found equally among the 190 families. A near majority (93/190 families, or 49%) of the families had three or fewer species listed. In contrast, just 18 families had 20 species or more, which is 10% of the families, thus these few families had half of the species listed (table 2). It is near folly to estimate precisely the total number of plant species in the world given how the floras of many areas, particularly the tropics, are poorly documented. Still, two of the three plant families with the largest number of famine foods, the bean family (Fabaceae) and sunflower family (Asteraceae), are also two of the three families with the largest number of species. The family with the third most species, the orchid family (Orchidaceae), is not represented in the famine food database. Unlike the bean and sunflower fam-

Famine Foods by Plant Families | 51

ilies, plants in the orchid family have little direct economic value for humans except as sources for vanilla and ornamentals. The third most common family in the famine food database, grass (Poaceae), is also very large family. So clearly the size of the family is related in part to the number of famine foods listed at least for the very largest plant families. Farther down the list in table 2, the relationship is less strong. Some families, such as nightshade (Solanaceae), yam (Dioscoreaceae), and spurge (Euphorbiaceae), have large number of entries given their size, whereas some large families, such as madder (Rubiaceae) and mustard (Brassicaceae), have fewer famine food entries. While the bean family has the most famine foods by far in the sample from Freedman’s database, it probably is not the most important everywhere. A database of 318 wild gathered plants used in three European Mediterranean countries—Spain, Greece, and Italy—lists these edibles by plant family (Leonti et al. 2006). In descending order, the families are sunflower (Asteraceae), rose (Rosaceae), lily (Liliaceae), carrot (Apiaceae), mustard (Brassicaceae), mint (Lamiaceae), borage (Boraginaceae), and bean (Fabaceae). While these are wild gathered foods and not specifically famine foods, we could expect based on Freedman’s database that the bean family would be higher in the list. In short, there seems to be strong regional differences in the plant families used as famine foods. We might further expect that plant families with many economically important species would also be those with many famine foods. If plants in the same family tend to share morphological similarities—edible tubers, for example—then other plants in that family may be useful under trying conditions. Comparing the plant families with the most famine foods with the families with the largest number of cultivated species fails to demonstrate a relationship. Zeven and Zhukovsky’s (1975) catalog of 2,297 cultivated species does not include ornamentals, forest trees, or nonvascular plants. It does include plants cultivated for reasons other than for food, but the majority are likely food plants. The Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient between the 10 most common families in each of the two lists is rs = 0.396 (p = 0.162), which indicates that there is no statistically significant similarity between the ranking of families with the most cultivated plants and those with the most famine foods. Again, this suggests that famine foods are not obviously distributed except large numbers from a few of the very largest plant families.

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Clearly, some families provide more famine foods than others, but it is not especially useful to try to predict which plant families would be famine foods in a particular area or in general based solely on systematics. Rather, it suggests that famine food use is especially contingent on specific cultural, historical, and biological considerations.

Plant Parts Used as Famine Foods Can we anticipate what plant parts will be used as famine foods? The answer to this question is a little clearer than the previous question about the distribution of famine foods by plant family. All plant parts have been used as famine foods, but some are more widely used than others. To begin to address this question, I chose a 10% (n = 19) sample of families from Freedman’s database that represents 144 parts eaten (table 3). Fruits and leaves are most commonly used. The category “fruits” can include fruits normally not eaten as well as fruits eaten at a stage of maturity when they are not normally consumed. An example of the latter would be cultivated fruits, such as mangos, eaten while green, before they mature. Overall, fruits and leaves account for fully 60% of the famine foods, followed by seeds and tubers/roots that are nearly an additional quarter of the famine foods. The remaining categories are far less widely used.

Ta b l e   3 Plant Parts Most Commonly Used as Famine Foodsa Part Fruits Leaves Seeds Tubers/Roots Shoots/Stems Otherb Bark Not specified a b

Number of Listings

Percentage

47 40 20 14 8 6 3 6

32.6 27.8 13.9 9.7 5.6 4.2 2.1 4.2

From 19 families, a sample of 10% of Freedman’s (2019) database. Flowers, gums, and whole plants.

Plant Parts Used as Famine Foods | 53

Ta b l e   4 Plant Parts Used in Five Studies Worldwide

Part Fruits Leaves Seeds Tubers/Roots Shoots/Stems Bark Other Not specified

Freedman Database (N = 118)a

Ming China (N = 475)b

Nigeria (N = 92)c

Rajasthan, India (N = 116)d

Ethiopia (N = 163)e

32.6 27.8 13.9 9.7 5.6 2.1 4.2 4.2

23.6 62.7 included in fruits 11.4 1.5 0.4 0.4 —

31.5 28.3 7.6 6.5 15.2 2.2 15.2 —

25.0 31.0 24.1 7.8 4.3 21.7 2.6 —

42.3 25.2 9.8 5.5 11.0 1.8 3.1 —

A 10% sample (19 families) from Freedman’s (2019) database. My tabulation based on Read’s (1946) translation of the Jiuhuang Bencao with 475 parts used from the 414 plants listed. There are two other tabulations of these data. Needham and Gwei-Djen (1986) matches mine well: fruits/seeds 23.1%, leaves 61.7%, tubers/roots 10.3%, shoots/stems 1.6%, bark 4%, and other 2.8%. Chapman and Wang’s (2002) list diverges in two categories, which are highlighted: fruits/ seeds 20.1%, leaves 40.9%, tubers/roots 9.8%, shoots/stems 26.3%, bark 0.3%, and other 2.7%. I suspect this difference simply reflects interpreting whether leaves and/or shoots/stems of annuals are being used, which may be ambiguous in the original text. c Mortimore 1989. d Gupta and Kanoda 1968; 116 parts from 86 taxa. e My tabulation from Guinand and Lemessa (2001), 163 parts from 125 taxa. a

b

Again, these data are very general and not regionally specific. For comparison with the Freedman data are four reasonably large databases of famine foods (table 4). Two are from Africa, specifically Nigeria and Ethiopia. Two are from Asia, specifically China and India. The largest is from the Jiuhuang Bencao, that remarkable compendium of 475 plant parts used from 414 Chinese famine foods assembled between the late 1300s and mid-1559 by Zhu Xiao and his son. Bernard Read, a pharmacologist with the Herbert Lester Institute of Medical Research in Shanghai, prepared an English translation (Fu 2016). The India data were compiled by Gupta and Kanoda (1968). The Nigerian information was assembled by Mortimore (1989), and the large Ethiopia list was prepared by Guinand and Lemessa (2001).

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Overall and despite the geographic separation and differences in environments, there is a general similarity among the lists. Based on relative ranking of categories, just three—fruits, leaves, and seeds—are the majority of plant parts used as famine foods. These account for between two-thirds and three-fourths in studies listed in table 4. Add the next category, tubers/ roots, and the vast majority of famine foods are found in these four parts. The other categories—shoots/stems, inner bark, other, and not specified— are far less common. While there is a very general similarity in plant parts used, each list differs from the others. The Chinese list has a relatively high percentage of leaves (63%), whereas the next highest leaf percentage in table 4 is about half the Chinese number. The Chinese data also have the highest percentage of tubers/roots, although the difference compared to the other databases is not as great. The Nigeria assemblage is lowest in seeds and is highest in shoots/ stems as well as the category “other.” The Rajasthan list of famine foods mirrors the general database closely except for inner bark, which is the highest of the five databases and a higher seed percentage. The Ethiopian example is also similar to Freedman’s data. This very general comparison shows overall similarities in the ranking of plant parts but with differences in the relative (percentages) importance of each type for different regions. The percentages of plant parts used as famine foods can be compared with plant parts used as normal rations to get a sense of how different plant parts used as famine food are from those normally eaten. Plants for the Future (https://pfaf.org/user/edibleuses.aspx) offers a worldwide inventory of 10,079 plant parts used for food. Leaves (27%), fruits (20%), seeds/seedpods (18%), and roots/corms/tubers (12%) dominate, with the other 23% of parts including stems/shoots (5%) and inner bark (2%). These percentages of edible plants broadly align with the famine food percentages, except for the low percentage of stems/shoots and greater number of tubers/roots. Specific cases often deviate from these general percentages based on local environmental and cultural conditions. Looking at another more restricted area, like North America, provides another view of famine food use cross-culturally (table 5). Moerman (1998) compiled an impressive compendium of plants recorded to have been used by Indigenous peoples of North America. The majority of these were used

Plant Parts Used as Famine Foods | 55

Ta b l e   5 Comparison of Famine Foods Recorded for North America Plant Part Fruits Leaves/Greens Seeds Tubers/Roots Shoots/Stems Bark Other/not specified

North Americaa

Southwestb

Northwestc

31.2 4.6 13.9 19.3 13.8 7.3 10.1

35.5 12.9 16.1 8.1 17.8 6.5 3.2

70.0 5.0 — 15.0 2.5 7.5 —

Moerman 1998. Minnis 1991; includes far northwestern Mexico. c Turner and Davis 1993. a

b

as medicine and/or foods. Included are data on 4,029 plant types (species, subspecies, and varieties) in 1,200 genera and 242 families covering 291 cultural groups. His category “starvation foods” includes plants in 65 genera, or 5% of the total genera listed. Interestingly, only 16 are listed for two or more groups, with most of these plants used by groups in the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico (SW/NW). The distribution of famine food types is similar to Freedman’s database (table 4). The second comparison is the SW/NW (Minnis 1991). The SW/NW sample is not independent from the North American sample, because the SW/NW data are part of the North American list. Nonetheless, there are differences. The percentage of leaves/ greens is higher for the SW/NW, and the percentage of tubers/roots is less. This seems to be counterintuitive. We might expect more underground parts and fewer leaves in an area like the SW/NW, where drought would be the primary reason for food shortages. Part of this seeming anomaly may be due to the number of greens from annuals common to fields and other disturbed grounds and to also the abundance of cacti in the region. The third North American example for comparison is the list of over 60 plant foods compiled for northwestern North America (Turner and Davis 1993). Turner and Davis’s study is especially important, because it examines food use during different types of food shortages, and the resulting differences are significant. They allocate the plants into five categories: inner bark, lichens and algae, greens and shoots, roots, and fruits. As mentioned

56 | Famine Foods

previously, they divide these resources into four types with two being closest to classic famine foods. Their second type is “alternative plant foods; those eaten to some extent during normal circumstances, but having a minimal contribution under normal dietary regime” (Turner and Davis 1993:Table 2). These 40 species are overwhelmingly fruits, with other categories far less common: inner bark, lichen/algae, green vegetables, and roots. It is interesting to contrast with the plants listed as “traditional plant foods of northwestern North America, used regularly but particularly valuable or useful as survival foods in winter and/or early spring”: inner bark (15%), lichen/algae (3%), greens and shoots (31%), roots (45%), and fruits (6%) (Turner and Davis 1993:Table 1). This list is mostly seasonal foods in which inner bark and greens are more important. In contrast, their list of “true famine foods: those never eaten except in times of extreme” (Turner and Davis 1993:Table 3) documents how roots are more important as food during extreme hunger. Other famine food inventories exist but are much smaller than these. For example, an African study from Malawi lists the 12 most frequently mentioned famine foods: fruits (33%), roots/tuber (42%), and seeds/beans (25%); no leaves were recorded in this list (Vaughn 1987). Obviously, the Malawi example is different from the others, including the Nigerian example, and may represent the small sample size, differing definitions, or local ecological differences. Comparison of the major famine food datasets shows clearly that there are some general similarities in the types of food used during shortages, such as the use of fruits, seeds, and leaves (greens). However, the local biotic setting of famine food use, especially local biodiversity, and cultural practices are critical in determining what type of food will be available and used.

Nutritional Value of Famine Foods Different plant foods have different nutritional value, so the types of plant parts used have relevance for sustaining groups during food shortages as noted by Read (1946). Fruits and especially leaves have fewer calories than tubers and seeds. The large number of leaves listed in the Jiuhuang Bencao and other databases may indicate that famine foods available to Chinese rural communities and others may have been more nutritionally limited

Nutritional Value of Famine Foods | 57

than for groups in other regions of the world where seeds, fruits, and tuber/ roots are more common famine foods. It often assumed that famine foods have little or no nutritional value and whose primary reason for use is to provide a feeling of satiety. There is probably some truth to this assumption, but it is not entirely true. While severe food shortages can reduce the consumption of all nutrients and have adverse health effects, acquiring sufficient amounts of life-sustaining calories is the priority. Therefore, only calories, not protein, fiber, vitamins, or minerals, will be considered. The difficultly in addressing the nutritional value of famine foods specifically is that too few have been assayed. An early example is a nutritional analysis of protein, fat, and carbohydrates in 13 Indian famine foods (British Medical Journal 1904). In addition to roots and seeds, this study assayed doda pollen (Withania coagulans?) and suggested that six of the 13 famine foods had sufficient nutritional value and lacked adverse effects, warranting greater use. There is a growing body of literature on the nutritional composition of wild foods, although most are not necessarily famine foods. Some examples that focus on locally used plants include those for various parts of Africa (e.g., FAO 1968, 1988; Malaisse and Parent 1985; Ogle and Grivetti 1985), the U.S. Southwest (e.g., Kuhnlein et al. 1979; Wolfe et al. 1985), and Australia (Miller et al. 1993). As a response to the Darfurian famine of the mid-1980s, the nutritive value of various famine foods were examined, including four local uncultivated cereal grains, so they could be compared with cultivated grains, such as millet and sorghum, which were staple crops. In sum, the results showed that “all famine food grains were broadly equivalent to sorghum in terms of energy” (Salih et al. 1992:423). In a nutritional assay of seven plants of the 17 recorded as famine foods in two communities in northeastern Brazil, Teixeira de Nacimento and colleagues (2012) documented the kcal/100 g: seeds (367), roots/tubers (104, 80, 63, and 74), leaf bases (125), and shoots (28). An analysis of 10 famine foods used in Papua New Guinea showed that leaves had more protein and lower carbohydrates than tuberous plants (Clarke 1989). Sena and colleagues (1998) assayed the leaves of seven plants and the fruits of another plant used as famine foods in the western Sahel in Niger. Surprisingly, they studied mineral, protein, and fatty acid constituents of these plants, and some plants provided high levels of various nutrients, but they did not provide the caloric value of these foods.

58 | Famine Foods

As a general proxy for famine foods, three large regional and widely spaced databases with caloric values are considered here: East Asia (Rao and Polacchi 1972), Latin America (Scrimshaw 1961), and food used by Aboriginal Australians (Miller et al. 1993) (table 6). The value of similar plant parts consumed as famine foods likely have lower caloric value than these common foods, but I suspect that the relative ranking of caloric value of famine food plant parts is similar to their counterparts in normally consumed foods. Seeds used as famine foods probably have greater energy value than leaves, et cetera. The Asia reference also provides the caloric value for the nonedible portion, the part of the food removed prior to consumption. As a basic framework for exploring the nutritive value of famine foods, we will look at examples from five of the six major categories of plant parts used as famine foods: fruits, leaves, seeds, tubers/roots, and stems/shoots.

Ta b l e   6 Caloric Value of Plant Parts Plant Part Fruits Leaves Seeds/Nuts Tubers/Roots Stems/Shoots

East Asiaa

Latin Americab

Aboriginal Australiansc

57.9 (40.6) (N = 126 [109])d 41.5 (25.7) (N = 110 [64]) 310.4 (204.5) (N = 37 [23]) 104.5 (86.4) (N = 16 [15]) 32.8 (19.6) (N = 17 [13])

83.3 (N = 188) 48.0 (N = 59) 455.3 (N = 25) 89.9 (N = 26) 31.6 (N = 13)

95.5 (N = 26) 57.7 (N = 12) 307.8 (N = 18) 124.2 (N = 16) 75.0 (N = 7)e

Rao and Polacchi 1972; entries listed as “leaves and stems” are included under the category “leaves.” b Scrimshaw 1961. c Miller et al. 1993; due to the large size of the database, the subsample for seeds and tubers/roots is every tenth entry. Stems/shoots and leaves are much smaller categories, and their entire sample was recorded. d The numbers in parentheses are for refuse; that is, parts not normally eaten such as peelings. These data are not available for the other two references. These parts may well be a more useful analog for famine foods than the parts normally eaten. e The unusually high average for these data is skewed by a single outlier with a kcal value of 329. After deleting this outlier, the average is 54.9, still high compared with the other two datasets but much closer. a

Nutritional Value of Famine Foods | 59

Data for the other category, inner bark, are not in any of the three references but will be considered separately. Of course, we must recognize that there are enormous differences within these categories. As Read (1946:5) noted, “One requires 20 lbs. of cabbage to yield 1,500 calories for survival diet,” a substantial amount to collect and cook. Other leaves may have greater caloric value. For example, dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) leaves have 204 kcal/100 g (Watt and Merrill 1963), so that given adequate density, dandelions would be a good famine food. Despite this variability, there is remarkable similarity in the caloric values for the categories among the East Asia, Latin America, and Australia data. The relative ranking of plant part types is the same for all three areas with one exception. Seed/nuts are most calorically valuable followed in order by tubers/roots, fruits, leaves, and finally stems/shoots. The fact that the average caloric values for the plant part categories are very similar among three geographically separated areas tends to support the hypothesis that the famine food parts would have roughly similar relative ranking values but not necessarily absolute values. The one exception is the Australia data where shoots/ stems have a higher average caloric yield than leaves. The East Asia data for the calories in portions removed before eating have the same relative ranking. Importantly, the caloric value of the refuse portion contains significant food energy value. Fruit refuse is 70% of the caloric value of the normally eaten portion, with similar values for other refuse parts: leaves (62%), seeds/nuts (66%), tubers/roots (83%), and stems/ shoots (60%). These percentages indicate that un- or underutilized portions have real caloric value. If these figures are analogs for famine foods, then they suggest that many famine foods likely have useful food value. This all should be considered a hypothesis since a number of other variables besides nutritional value would be critical in the selection of food during shortages if for no other reason than the fact that we do not know if the calories in the plant parts would be available in the human gut. In addition, these calculations do not consider energy expenditures to gather and process famine foods, especially those having chemicals needing to be removed or neutralized, or those present in very low densities that require inordinate labor to collect. The last category is inner bark, or cambium, the living layers in wood. It is not thought of as especially edible outside of Scandinavia and other

60 | Famine Foods

circumpolar areas (Eidlitz 1969). In subarctic Europe, inner bark was a commonly used food during the early spring when other foods were limited and had been used for a long time (Östlund et al. 2003, 2009). Inner bark is nutrient rich, mostly in carbohydrates, with about 20% of the carbohydrates of wheat flour (Airaksinen et al. 1986). The nutritional assay of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) inner bark from British Columbia yielded 51 kcal/100 g with many trace minerals (Dilbone et al. 2013). In addition to carbohydrates, most in the form of sugars, the lodgepole pine samples also contained about the same amount of protein as sugars. In contrast to nutritional analyses of inner bark from other pines, these specimens contained minimal vitamin C. Chinese elm inner bark yielded 53 kcal/100 g (Read 1946). Feeding experiments with mice indicate that pine inner bark is edible without undue negative effects (Airaksinen et al. 1986), and analyses of the lodgepole pine specimens did not show toxic metals (Dilbone et al. 2013). Use of inner bark is not limited to circumpolar areas and western North America. Inner bark was also an early recorded famine food in northeastern North America (Waugh 1916). The inner bark of a shrub in the nettle family (Pouzolzia viminea) and a small legume tree, jami (Prosopis cineraria), were Indian famine foods (Gupta 1962; Kanodia and Gupta 1968). Turner and Davis (1993) and Moerman (1998) document that inner bark is a normally consumed food in northwestern North America and North America in general, but that it was especially useful during food shortages. Swetnam (1984), using an innovative dendrochronological approach, documents how ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) inner bark was used by the Apache in southwestern New Mexico. This study is notable because it is one of the few studies that tracks the historical context of a plant often used as a famine food among Indigenous peoples.

Geographic Distribution of Famine Foods Just as famines have not been distributed evenly by location, the geographic distribution of famine foods also varies. Freedman’s database divided famine foods by continents. Table 7 shows that Asia accounts for over half of the famine foods listed in his database, followed by Africa, with North America,

Geographic Distribution of Famine Foods | 61

Ta b l e   7 Geographic Distribution of Famine Foods Continent Africa Asia Europe North America South America Oceania

Number of Plants Listed

Percentage

350 1,023 94 88 28 119

20.6 60.1 5.5 5.2 1.6 7.0

Source: Freedman 2019.

South America, and Oceania having far fewer entries. These numerical differences surely reflect the varying amount of research in each area. Famine food use in India in particular seems to be better documented than many other countries. Part of this is likely due to the tremendous diversity of tribal/rural ethnic communities in India, a country with nearly onefifth of the world’s population, a well-developed ethnobotanical inventory, a robust cohort of botanists, and a long history of periods of food shortages (e.g., Murton 1984). At least 9,500 uncultivated plants are documented for India; 3,900 are edible wild plants, of which a number are famine foods (Jain and Tiwari 2012). Documentation of Indian famine foods began long before but became more systematized during the British occupation; after all, the British colonial bureaucracy had previous experience with the Irish Potato Famine (Gray 2006). Watt’s (1889) early encyclopedic six-volume compendium of economic plants of India lists 280 that were used as famine foods. The British also systematized colonial famine efforts with the development of the Indian Famine Codes, probably the most institutionalized and bureaucratized governmental set of “modern” policies for recognizing and responding to the most severe food shortages (Brennan 1984). Developed by the Indian Famine Commission after the 1877–1879 famines, the Famine Codes and later revisions were used until the 1970s. Scholarly interest in famine foods has continued by an active cohort of Indian scholars of ethnobotany. China, too, has a long history of interest in and documentation of famine foods among its huge and diverse population. Africa is also an area with a

62 | Famine Foods

significant corpus of literature on famine foods. No doubt the smaller famine food inventory available for Native American communities has been affected by colonization, migration, loss of traditional land-use patterns, and relocation. All these likely resulted in the loss of much Indigenous knowledge of famine foods. Still, as Moerman’s database illustrates, there is significant information available for North America. Despite Europe’s long history of numerous food shortages and botanical scholarship, there are few studies of European famine food plant use available. The paucity of data on South American famine foods almost certainly also reflects a lack of ethnobotanical research. Given the large number of communities in South America with strong and historically deep connections with their local environments, it seems this continent would be a particularly useful place to record new famine foods.

Plants Used During Famines Other than for Food While plants are normally primary sources of food during food shortages for most of humanity—the circumpolar region being the clear exception—there are additional plant uses under these circumstances. Plant-based medicines can be used to treat health problems and related issues caused by food shortages. Notations on herbarium specimens for plumed cockscomb (Celosia argentea) and spiny amaranth (Amaranthus spinosus), both species of the amaranth family (Amaranthaceae), indicate that these were eaten to reduce the effects of food shortages, although it is not obvious what this specifically means (Altschul 1973). Another relationship between wild foods and health is the hypothesized value of wild plants providing medicinally useful properties: “Wild gathered weedy plants and fruits, may, therefore, not only be an emergency source for food in times of famines . . . but they also compensate for the lack of pharmacologically active substances which cultivated species lost during domestication” (Leonti et al. 2006:139; see also Huss-Ashmore and Johnston 1994; Johns 1990). Other unexpected uses are also known. For example, Alcorn notes that for the Huastec of northeastern Mexico, “The sight of certain plants can recall painful memories. . . . Discussing huchuk’ (Ipomoea alba), one infor-

Nature of Famine Foods | 63

mant recalled that during famine times, the vine was tied around the waist tightly to counteract hunger pains and allow a person strength to work” (1984:147). Turner and Efrat (1982) mention how western red cedar (Thuja plicata) branches that had been used in fish traps were boiled to make a better tasting soup broth in times of need by groups in British Columbia.

Nature of Famine Foods Given the large number of famines and other types of food shortages throughout human history around the globe and the value of famine foods for survival, we would expect a large number of plant famine foods. And I have no doubt that knowledge of many of these has been lost, but I also suspect there are many still to be recorded. Nonetheless, what we do know is useful. First, plant foods that fall within the most restrictive definition of famine foods, those only eaten in times of food distress, are but a fraction of the foods consumed during shortages. This indicates that we need to consider all plants that are eaten during food shortages, not just those eaten only during shortages. Otherwise, we can lose a more holistic picture of the relationships between foods and humans during times of food stress. While some plant families, especially the bean family, provide an unusually large number of famine foods, the number of plant families with some edible famine foods is high. Freedman’s database includes information for nearly 200 families with at least one famine food. Watt’s (1889) early compendium of 280 Indian famine foods includes plants in 88 families. Clearly, famine foods can be found throughout the plant kingdom. Consideration of what plant parts are most commonly used as famine foods shows that leaves, fruits, and seeds are the most widely recorded with tubers/roots being slightly less common. Other parts such as inner bark, resins/gums, flowers, pollen, and shoots/stems are less well represented in famine food databases. But the importance of various parts is heavily conditioned by the study region. In sum, the data here point to the conclusion that there are a large number of famine foods, and there are likely many more to be documented. It

64 | Famine Foods

is difficult to predict what plants will be useful during times of need. The implication of this fact is that knowledge of local cultural and economic conditions is essential to record and understand famine food use. The only way to gather this information is on-the-ground investigations. Famine foods have the potential for being nutritionally useful. Therefore, there are clear reasons to expand our inventory of known famine foods.

Three

Examples Nonagricultural Societies

I have no idea how I managed to survive and stay alive. In 1933, we tried to survive the best we could. We collected grass, goose-foot, burdocks, rotten potatoes and made pancakes, soups from putrid beans and nettles. —Olexandra Rafalska Zhytomir (http://holodomorct.org /holodomor-survivor-eyewitness-accounts/)

T

he study of nonagricultural communities has significance if for no other reason than the fact that farming and animal husbandry are but a thin historical veneer of the entire history of humanity, and the basic evolution of human nutrition and health occurred before plant and animal domestication. The lack of agriculture does not mean, as many may assume, that these communities did not alter or manage their environments. There are enumerable examples of foraging groups manipulating their local ecology. For example, the common Australian term “fire-stick farming” recognizes that Aboriginal populations manipulated their environments by conscious use of fire, and this is only one example of resource manipulation by Aboriginal Australians (e.g., Denham 2008). There are other instances of environmental management even in places one would least expect to find it. The aptly named Death Valley in California has a depauperate flora and the Indigenous Paiute were low-population density foragers, yet they actively managed plants in a number of ways (Fowler 2000). And other environmental manipulations by foragers are well documented in other parts of North America (e.g., Anderson 2005; Dean 2010; Krech 2000; Minnis and Elisens 2000).

66 | Nonagricultural Societies

The traditional terms for nonagricultural groups have been “huntergatherers” or “foragers.” Various scholars have had issues with these terms for a variety of reasons (Kelly 2013). One critique is that for a majority of these groups, plants provide more food than animals so that “gatherer-hunters” might be a more appropriate term. Another issue is that there is a continuum, not a dichotomy, from consuming only native foods not manipulated by humans at one extreme to a diet based nearly exclusively on domesticated plants and animals at the other end. In between are a full mix of hunting, gathering, fishing, and cultivation. In addition, groups can shift among the resource mixes through seasons and through time. The Western Apache of the U.S. Southwest during the 1800s, as an example, combined casual farming with a basic reliance on native plants and animals (Buskirk 1986). In fact, many traditionally foraging groups now have a mixed economy of gathering and gardening (Codding and Kramer 2016). This volume is not intended to add to this discussion. For our purposes, the distinction used here is between groups who mostly rely on native, non-domesticated foods in contrast to communities that rely mostly on the cultivation of domesticated plants, which are considered in the next chapter. Furthermore, the terms “hunter-gathers,” “foragers,” and “nonagriculturalists” will be used interchangeably here. For millennia, humans adapted by living off of the great variety of naturally available foods from diverse environments, from Arctic tundra and dense tropical rainforests to stark deserts. However, now very few groups in the world remain hunter-gatherers, and those that do remain in or have been pushed into regions with poor agricultural potential. Therefore, the data available about famine food use by these groups reflect only a small sample of what hunter-gather groups have known and now know about edible resources over deep time. One of the most salient factors in understanding famine food use among hunter-gatherers is the acknowledgment of the range of variation in food mix. Kelly (2013:Table 3–1) collated dietary percentages from gathering, hunting, and fishing for about 130 foraging communities. Gathered resources range from 0%–85% for different groups; hunting percentages range from 5%–90%; fishing percentages range from 0%–70%. Given these differences, we would expect significant variation in the use of famine foods.

San of Southern Africa | 67

This chapter will briefly sample this variation as it relates to famine food use by looking at four regions: San and neighboring groups in southern Africa; Aboriginal communities of Australia, especially in the Western Desert; circumpolar peoples; and groups in northwestern North America. The first two allow some comparisons between cultures in some of the most arid regions inhabited by people. The last two live in very different environments. Circumpolar groups inhabit what most perceive as another harsh set of environments, but in this case cold, not arid. Northwestern North America is different in two critical ways. First, many locations in this region have relative food abundance. Second, population sizes and densities in coastal locations are high for foragers, residences tend to be more permanent, and some groups have strong social hierarchies more characteristic of some village agriculturalists.

San of Southern Africa The San are foraging communities in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa centered on Botswana. The San diet is composed of 80%–85% gathered resources, 15%–20% hunting resources, and 0% fishing resources (Kelly 2013). Campbell (1986) estimates that Botswana has at least 150 edible native plants. The San have become the iconic example of foragers largely because of extensive ethnographic research, with the most influential book being Richard Lee’s (1979) The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society. However, the San’s traditional responses to food shortages, including use of famine foods, have become less viable for a variety of reasons such as the introduction of livestock, relief efforts, opportunities for wage labor, and other outside influences (Hitchcock et al. 1989). The long-held assumption that foragers live on the edge of starvation was challenged by Sahlins (1972), who characterized them—with not a little hyperbole—as the “original affluent society.” Lee’s work provided an empirical and nuanced example of a foraging society. Although the San do experience periods of food shortage, they have sophisticated knowledge of the local environment, allowing them to sustain themselves. Lee collected data on 105 edible plants, 85 during a drought year and an additional 30 during a

68 | Nonagricultural Societies

Figure 2 A !Kung San woman gathering plants (photograph courtesy of John Yellen).

year with good rainfall. He divided these into six major categories: primary, major, minor, supplementary, rare, and problematic, based on a variety of criteria. The mongongo nut (Ricinodendron rautanenii) is the only primary !Kung San plant food, whereas for other San groups in Botswana, the marula (Sclerocarya caffra) is a staple (Wilmsen and Durham 1988). The category “supplementary” is one of two categories closest to what we might consider famine foods, but it is not quite the same. Lee (1979:172) defines these as “foods eaten when more desirable foods become locally exhausted.” The category “rare” could be close to what we would consider famine foods: “Many were scarce; others were plentiful but were downgraded because of poor taste or undesirable side effects” (Lee 1979:172). The primary differences between normal rations and what likely would be famine foods are berries and gums. Gums are far more common in the supplementary category, and berries are more common in the rare category. Gums were not a preferred food; as Lee notes, “The !Kung do not rate this food highly, claiming it is hard on digestion” (1979:163). The variation among San groups in native plant foods eaten is substantial. Table 8 compares the types of plant foods eaten by four San communities. There are likely issues with the data, such as underreporting the full range of plant use. It is doubtful that the !Xo use only 16 plants. These data suggest

San of Southern Africa | 69

Ta b l e   8 Comparison of Plant Foods Among Four San Groups (%) Group Type of Food Leaves/stalks Bulbs/roots/tubers Berries/fruits/seeds/nuts Mushrooms Other

!Kung (N = 85)

/Gwi (N = 34)

=/Kade (N = 78)

!Xo (N = 16)

4.4 36.5 40.0 — 18.8

17.7 23.5 58.8 — —

18.0 43.6 25.5 1.3 11.5

18.8 50.0 31.2 — —

Source: Adapted from Grivetti 1979:Table 3.

that the greatest differences are in the number of bulbs/roots/tubers eaten, with two groups eating far fewer berries/fruits/seeds/nuts than the other two. Even for culturally related and neighboring communities in generally similar environments, plant use can differ substantially. While the data in this table are not specifically foods eaten during shortages, it does point to the conclusion that there is likely variation among related groups in the use of famine foods. Another table documenting variation among foragers in southern Africa is presented in Campbell (1986:Table 1), which compares the use of wild plants among eight San and Khoe communities. Of the 82 taxa, the majority are not widely used by all eight groups. Only six were used by all eight groups: velvet raisin (Grewia flava), Grewia sp., cork-bark monkey orange (Strychnos cocculoides), clusterleaf (Terminalia sericea), Acacia spp., and “mushrooms.” Four types—watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), Gemsbok cucumber (Acanthosicyos naudiniana), a cucurbit (Cucumis hookeri), and buffalo thorn (Ziziphus mucronata)—were used by seven groups. In contrast, slightly over half were used by only one or two groups. While this distribution may be due somewhat to differences in observations by the original scholars and by some variation in floral communities, nonetheless it shows how much variation there can be with the use of wild plant foods in this region and by extension the use of famine foods. Probably the closest to famine foods would be “supplementary foods,” a category that includes 30 species with 39 parts used: 7 fruits/berries

70 | Nonagricultural Societies

Ta b l e   9 Comparison of !Kung San “Normal” and “Supplementary” Plant Foods Plant Parts

Normal Foods

Supplementary Foods

Leaves/Stalks Bulbs/tubers/roots Berries/seeds/fruits/nuts Other Mushrooms Total

22 (17.5%) 31 (24.6%) 47 (37.3%) 23 (18.3%) 3 (2.3%) 126 (100%)

1 (2.6%) 12 (30.8%) 7 (17.9%) 19 (48.7%) 0 (0.0%) 39 (100%)

Sources: Lee 1979; Grivetti 1979.

(including a “bean”), 19 edible gums, 12 roots/bulbs, and 1 leaf. Interestingly, the percentages of plant types used as supplementary foods are quite different from those generally used (table 9). The category “other,” which includes resins, flowers, and other plant parts, is far more common in the supplementary list, whereas leaves and stalks are less common as supplementary foods. This suggests that potential famine foods are not necessarily the same type of plant parts as those used as normal rations. There are clear differences when compared with the list of plant parts used as famine foods discussed in chapter 2. The large numbers of roots/ bulbs, the many edible gums, and the remarkable lack of leafy foods stand out compared with the examples discussed in chapter 2. The only category similar to the other groups is fruits/berries. These differences could be due to the differential availability of possible famine foods in the environment. The San live in a desert with minimal and variable precipitation, so leaves would likely be less available than roots and bulbs during dry periods, common adaptations to arid environments by perennial plants. If Lee is correct in arguing that the San have abundant food sources, then it may be that the San need not consume even potentially lower preference food that others might use. Lee’s inventory of 100 edible plants includes only six with leaves, which might indicate a paucity of edible leaves in their environment or at least the low number considered as edible by the San. There are 21 species of plants eaten by the Gwembe Tonga of southern Africa (see chapter 4) that the San themselves do not consider edible (Lee 1979). The San pattern may suggest that we have no documentation of the

Australian Aboriginal Communities | 71

plants used during the severest droughts, or in fact that the San knowledge and use of resources as documented by Lee are sufficient for their low population density so that they need not use the lowest possible preference foods. The use of food during food shortages by other hunter-gatherer groups of southern Africa has been examined. The Tyua inhabit a more mesic setting in Botswana and adjacent countries than the San. They eat at least 83 species of plants, with about a dozen being especially important (Hitchcock 1988). During seasonal shortages, normally the dry season after stored foods are exhausted, they use a wider range of plant foods such as gums, inner bark, and especially tuberous plants. During especially bad dry seasons, the Tyua use “starvation foods,” which are mainly bitter tasting roots and inner bark (Hitchcock 1988:72). Plant food use by the San and their neighbors is arguably one of the best examples for foragers. While more data are always welcome, the information available clearly shows the number of actual and potential famine foods available. This case study also demonstrates variation in the use of famine foods, even among culturally related groups in generally similar environments. This theme will be seen in the following two chapters and again reemphasizes that understanding famine food use requires knowledge of a specific setting that includes biology, culture, and history.

Australian Aboriginal Communities Indigenous groups have lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years and have adapted to an enormously diverse continent, from the extremely arid interior to tropical coastal zones in the north (Carr and Carr 1981; Peterson 1978). There are around 500 Indigenous groups speaking hundreds of languages that use a large number of plants. It has been estimated that there are 6,000 edible plants in Australia, with 2,400 in Queensland alone; up to 150 plants have been documented as used by Aboriginal peoples in the Western Desert and 750 estimated in the tropical north (Newton 2016). This abundance was not always recognized by non-Aboriginal Australians. Maiden (1889:1), in his well-known catalog of the useful plants of Australia listing 212 edible plants, suggested that “Hooker, in his Flora of Tasmania, truly remarks

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F i g u re 3 Bush seeds at King’s Creek Station, Northern Territories, Australia (photograph by Benny Marty, shutterstock.com).

that the products of many plants, although ‘eatable’ are not ‘fit to eat,’ and would never be employed as food except in the direst necessity. Australian indigenous fruits, roots, leaves, and stems are nothing to boast as eatables.” This attitude was not conducive to early detailed studies of Aboriginal Australian plant use. This is unfortunate because, like many areas of the world, use of traditional foods has declined before their documentation. As Jupp notes, “Throughout Australia Aboriginal food sources were either destroyed by farming, or made inaccessible by concentration of Aboriginal population. Traditional foods were replaced by rations. . . . The replacement diet was particularly deficient in fresh fruits and vegetables” (2001:92). Despite the profound changes in the current Aboriginal diet, at least one study found that 40% of Aboriginal interviewees in remote communities in northern Australia still use some traditional foods during times of food insecurity, although this is less than the percentage (53%) who borrowed food or money during such times (Ferguson et al. 2017). There has also been a resurgent interest in native foods (“bush food,” or “bushtucker”) by nonAboriginal Australians, but one can still only wonder how much information

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has been lost since the beginning of widespread European settlement in the late eighteenth century. Irvine (1957) inventoried native foods used by Aboriginal Australians. He lists hundreds of plants known to have been used as food. Underground structures (roots, tubers, underground stems), fruits, and seeds are vast majority of foods listed. Other categories, such as stems, flowers, and leaves, are less frequently cited. Those plants specifically identified by Irvine as famine foods are much different from the general catalog of food plants. Twenty-two are gums/ manna/saps/nectars, 12 are stems/stalks, and 5 are flowers/buds. Gums and other exudates are also some of the more important famine foods listed for the San but are uncommon famine foods for other groups. One gum from an Australian native food plant (Terminalia canescens) was assayed (Miller et al. 1993). It yielded 333 kcal/100 g, most in the form of carbohydrates, so it is a reasonably nutritious food. The relative importance of gums and similar foods among some foragers contrasts with the lack of their use as famine foods among agriculturalists and urban dwellers. It could be that gums and resins are not available in sufficient quantities to be useful for agriculturalists and other populations with more people despite their food value. It is also possible that many of the gums come from trees in the legume or bean family, such as acacias, which are more common in arid areas, including the deserts of India. Plants in other regions have many fewer edible gums and resins. Irvine’s list of famine foods is also very different from lists of famine foods from other cultural groups as presented in chapter 2, with one exception of stems/stalks, and is different from the overall list of edible native plants. One would expect tubers, leaves, seeds, and fruits to be the most common plant parts used as famine foods, as they are for most populations. Their absence is so striking that this list seems quite inadequate and biased, but it is not clear why Irvine’s list is so unique. The differences between Australian Aboriginal famine foods listed by Irvine and other data may be due in part to a definitional issue; his famine foods may be those eaten only during the most severe food shortages. Other plants listed may include famine foods that were also eaten during normal times, hunger seasons, or less severe food shortages. Irvine does briefly discuss preparation methods for some of

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the foods. A number of these require substantial processing, which suggests to me that these may not be preferred foods. Examination of specific case studies should show why this database is so unique. The flexibility in food preferences among arid-land Aboriginal Australians and others like the San has allowed humans to live in seemingly inhospitable locations such as the Western Desert of Australia. This region has the best documented indigenous ethnobotany in Australia and offers a contrast to the Kalahari, although “compared with the Kalahari Desert peoples, the Western Desert peoples must subsist on significantly less water, game, and plant food” (Gould 1969:273). Research on the use of famine foods among these communities is not well developed beyond plant use dealing with seasonal shortages. It is not clear if those studying Western Desert plant food use have been present during shortages more severe than hunger seasons; still, fortunately, at least there is information on food used during yearly hunger seasons. Cane (1987) worked with the Gugadja people who live at the end of the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. He lists 126 plants recognized as useful by the Gugadja, with 70 of these yielding edible parts. Of these 70 edible plants, 42 provide seeds, 6 have edible roots and tubers, 12 fruits are recorded to have been eaten, and the remaining 10 are edible gums and resins. This is compared with 38 edible plants recorded for the southern portion of the Western Desert, 81 useful plants recorded the northeastern part of the Western Desert, and between 77 and 92 edible plants for central Australia (Cane 1987). Only two plants are specifically recognized as most useful during seasonal food shortages, the underground parts of a legume (Cassia notabilis) and lolly bush (Clerodendrum floribundum), both of which are fibrous and require more processing than other roots/tubers. In addition, according to Cane, “The edible shrubs, Acacias, eucalyptus, spinifex, and the succulent Tecticornia verrocosa are generally at the bottom of the list, although their relative importance in the daily diet increases during the hot season (or in the case of spinifex, in the late wet season) when everything else is in short supply” (1987:431). Also essential for coping with seasonal food variation are caches of stored seeds such as those from some acacias. It is reasonable to anticipate that the foods most useful during hunger seasons were those that also were especially valuable during more sustained and

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severe food shortages. We may gain some insights into famine food use by examining Cane’s (1987:Table 1) list of edible seeds, which is the most diverse category of plant foods, with 42 species recognized as edible. He divided these into three categories of importance: major (7), moderate (18), and minor (17). The last categories, being less preferred, may well have played an important role as famine foods. These seeds are from a wide variety of plants including eucalyptus, acacia, weedy annuals, herbs, and shrubs. Latz (1995), a botanist raised in Alice Springs, inventories plants used by Aboriginal communities in the central Australian deserts. These are cultural groups in seven language groups: Warlpiri, Alyawarra, Anmatyerr, Pintupi/ Luritja, Western Arrernte, Eastern Arrernte, and Pitjantjara/Yankunytjatjara. Of the over 250 plant taxa that are listed as useful (including plant use for purposes other than food), 13 are mentioned as having been used during emergencies or hunger seasons: black gidgee (Acacia pruinocarpa), spiderling or punarnaua (Boerhavia spp.), parakeelya (Calandrinia balonensis), parakeelya remota (C. remota), blushing bindweed (Convolvulus erubescens), blue heronsbill (Erodium cygnorum), desert fig (Ficus platypoda), rough heliotrope (Heliotropium asperrimum), native morning glory (Ipomoea muelleri), Mueller’s peppercress (Lepidium muelleri-ferdinandi), wild tobacco or pituri (Nicotiana gossei), purslane or munyeroo (Portulaca oleracea), and soft spinifex (Triodia pungens). Of these, the plant parts consumed breaks down as seeds/fruits (5), whole plants (4), leaves (1), roots (2), and stems (1). The single leaf example, a wild tobacco/rock pituri, was used chiefly to suppress hunger and thirst pangs, not as a source of nutrition. The most important plant parts used, specifically seeds/fruits and tubers/roots, are similar to other datasets. Leaves are less than expected, and whole plants (whatever that means—it could include leaves as well as stems) is higher than average. The lack of gums and resins contrasts with the lists compiled by Irvine and Cane. We would expect that many of the other plants not listed as emergency food would have been used more intensively when more preferred foods were not available in the necessary quantities. One especially salient point in Latz’s (1995:338) summary is in his table 4, “List of Species Utilised in Australia But Not in the Area Researched.” He lists 30 plant taxa. Of these a full third are “plants considered inedible by at least one Aboriginal group in the research area.” These break down to seeds

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(7), sporocarps (1), roots (1), and others (1). These data are consistent with the general conclusion that plant characteristics alone do not determine the use of plants during food shortages, because neighboring communities can have significant differences in their inventory of edible plants. It would be useful to determine why seeds were not used by all groups, since many seeds do not require elaborate processing to make them edible, and seeds can be easier to store than other foodstuffs. Likewise, there are a number of plants with edible parts not recognized as food by the Warlpiri of western central Australia. They consider yams to be the most dependable plant food, with spinifex roots and the seeds of Eucalyptus microtheca and Acacia farnesiana used reluctantly (Meggitt 1957). There are other studies that provide limited information on famine food use by Aboriginal Australians. Clarke (2007, 2014) enumerated a few plants important as “hard times” food used by Aboriginal communities in various parts of the continent. These are water ribbon roots (Cycnogeton procerum), nardoo spore cases (Marsilea drummondii), native turmeric bulbs (Curcuma australasica), quandong kernels (Santalum acuminatum), tar-vine roots (Boerhavia spp.), common reed roots (Phragmites australis), horse dung fungus (Pisolithus arhizus), heliotrope seeds (Heliotropium spp.), and various grasses grains. Dry season consumables mentioned are nonda plum fruits (Parinari nonda), billygoat plum fruits (Planchonia careya), gulf plum fruits (Terminalia carpentariae), cheesefruit (Alstonia actinophylla), various cycad fruits, grass seeds—especially naked woolybutt seeds (Eragrostis eriopoda)— and native millet seeds (Panicum decompositum). Of the 92 edible plants recorded for the Alyawarra of arid central Australia, four roots are recognized as emergency foods: red spiderling (Boerhavia diffusa), lolly bush (Clerodendrum floribundum), grey corkwood (Erythrina vespertilio), and bush banana (Leichhardtia australis) (O’Connell et al. 1983). As the authors suggest, there are likely many more food plants that were used by the Alyawarra in the past, including famine foods. Like the San, the Aboriginal Australians are recorded as having used an impressive inventory of plants from a botanically diverse continent. Yet, it is reasonable to expect that far more plants were used as famine foods in the past. Table 10 offers a comparison between San and Aboriginal foods likely to have been used as famine foods. As mentioned, Irvine’s list is quite different,

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Ta b l e   1 0 Comparison of Famine Foods for Australian Aboriginal Groups and !Kung San !Kung Sana Supplementary

Aboriginal Australians Rare

Irvineb

Latzc

Type

N

%

N

%

N

%

N

%

Fruits Berries Gums Roots/Tubers Other Total

3 3 10 12 2 30

10.0 10.0 33.3 40.0 6.7 100.0

2 5 3 8 1 19

10.5 26.3 15.8 42.1 5.3 100.0

0 0 22d 0 17e 39

— — 56.4 — 43.6 100.0

5 — — 2 6f 13

38.5 — — 15.4 46.2 100.0

Lee 1979:Table 6.7. Irvine 1952. c Latz 1995. d These may include insect secretions on plants. e Flowers/buds (5), stems/stalks (12). f Whole plants (4), leaves (1), and stems (1). a

b

so it should be considered with caution. The largest catalog of famine foods for a specific Australian community is by Latz. While his plant part categories are not exactly the same for the San, there are clear differences. Gums are missing from the Latz list, which is notable given how common they are in Irvine’s and Cane’s lists. Roots are a far lower percentage for Latz’s list than the San list. The apparent differences for berries and fruits are largely due to the fact that these two categories are combined on the Latz list, which also includes seeds.

Circumpolar Groups The environments and subsistence economies of Inuit and other circumpolar cultures clearly contrast with the San and Aboriginal Australians. The former live in Arctic and Subarctic regions; the latter in deserts as well as temperate and tropical locations. The former consume mostly meat and fish along with a few plants, whereas the latter rely mostly on plant foods

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supplemented by meat or fish in some areas. Based on Kelly’s (2013) list, 12 Inuit groups consume 5%–87% hunting resources, with an average 36%. Fishing’s contributions range from 10%–80%, with an average of 59%. In contrast, gathered plants constitute only 0%–20% of their diet, with an average of 6%. An indirect but instructive measure of the role of plants versus animal/fish resources is the fact that a volume on sustainable food security in the Arctic (Duhaime 2002) rarely mentions plants, and the index does not list a single plant. Inuit groups either rely on fishing or hunting with minimal gathering. Minimal does not mean unimportant, as the plant used can provide valuable nutrients (for a comprehensive summary of nutritional properties of edible Canadian plants, including those used by the Inuit, see Kuhnlein and Turner [1991]). Food shortages are not unknown among the Inuit; bad weather, depletion of seasonal stores, and poor hunting can cause hunger seasons and famines. The two best well-known and creative uses of food plants by some Inuit and other circumpolar groups are the consumption of lichen and moss partially digested in caribou and reindeer stomachs and the widespread use of inner bark; the latter is documented as having been used for centuries (Rautio et al. 2014). But there are more plants used for food. The Chugach Inuit normally consume more than 26 plant species (Birket-Smith 1953),

F i g u re 4 Inuit village of Qikiqtarjuaq on Broughton Island, Nunavut, Canada (photograph by Sophia Granchinho, shutterstock.com).

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and the Labrador Inuit eat over 20 types of berries (Eidlitz 1969). More recently, Boulanger-Lapointe and colleagues (2019) investigated the use of berries among central Canadian Inuit by interviewing 138 individuals from a number of communities. Five species were most commonly used: blueberry (Vaccinium uliginosum, V. caespitosum), crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus), and lingonberry/cranberry/partridgeberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). Other berries were important in subregions. Traditional, or “country foods,” are becoming a smaller part of the diet as market foods increase based on an overview of numerous studies of the Inuit diet from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia, and consumption of plants is mentioned only in six of 13 Inuit study areas: St. Lawrence Island (berries), Broughton Island (seaweed and berries), Belcher Island (berries), Northwest Territories (berries and “other plants”), Greenland (crowberries), and Siberia (berries and roots) (Blanchet et al. 2002). While these few plants are not specifically famine foods, the importance of berries across the region likely indicated that berries were critical food during shortages. As we will see in the forthcoming discussion of neighboring northwestern North America, berries are a major type of famine food in that region as well. It would seem that the increased use of nonlocal foods by Inuit communities has increased the consumption of plants foods and plant-based food (such as refined sugar), although this change has many negative health and economic consequences (e.g., Kuhnlein et al. 2009). There are some examples of plants used as famine foods among the Inuit. Boulanger-Lapointe and colleagues (2019) mention that berries were valuable foods during hunger seasons as well as famines. Likely one of the reasons for berries to have been so important and famine foods is that many remain on the plants and are available during the winter. Some of BoulangerLapointe’s informants remember how they would collect berries even under the snow. Eidlitz (1969) summarizes emergency plant foods consumed by the three Inuit groups: the Caribou, Iglulik, and Angmagssalik. In all three cases, no plants were listed as emergency foods, only various animals. While it is hard to imagine that no plants were used by these groups, her summary nonetheless indicates how plants were secondary or tertiary food categories unlike for so many other hunter-gatherer peoples throughout the world. Perhaps because the Inuit diet was and is so heavily based on fish and animals,

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the study of plants and how they are used during food shortages is not as well developed as in some other areas of the world. While I focus on the Inuit, there are records of plant foods eaten during shortages for other circumpolar groups that might be useful to briefly mention. Eidlitz (1969) provides the most comprehensive, yet still meager, list of plant famine food use among circumpolar peoples: Itel’ (inner bark), river Yukagirs (willow inner bark), and coastal Chukchi (no emergency foods listed but likely some of the 21 plant parts used, not including lichen from reindeer stomachs, were more intensively gathered during food shortages). Although not specific only to hunter-gatherers of the circumpolar region, an overview of plant use in preindustrial Sweden offers a side view of food use mostly by rural peasants but also foragers in this region. The pattern of famine food use fits the other circumpolar locations: “In times of food shortages, the amount of wild plants increased in the diet, but the peasants and nomads were often able to use fish and game to provide enough nutrients” (Svanberg 2012:317). Plants used during shortages included chaff from frozen grain, flax (Linum usitatissimum), fruits, hazel (Corylus sp.) buds, nettles, leaves, hay, straw, nut shells, and vetch (Vicia spp.). In addition, a wide range of plant parts and other materials were added to bread to extend it. Even though plants normally were a minor part of the circumpolar diet, they still played a role as foods both in normal times and during shortages. And like other forager case studies, the very limited information points toward the fact that there is much variation among groups in the plant foods eaten during shortages.

Northwestern North America Northwestern North America (NWNA) was and is the home of many Indigenous peoples who have occupied diverse environments for millennia (Moss 2011). While there are inland semiarid steps, the region is best known for its coastal temperate rainforests, a stark and obvious contrast to the other nonagricultural groups previously discussed. Critical for many groups are the major rivers such as the Fraser and Columbia with their abundance of fish, especially anadromous fish such as salmon, and marine mammals. This

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is clear when considering dietary averages for 10 NWNA foraging groups where dietary contributions are 26% from hunting, 20% from gathering, and 54% from fishing, with the smallest average for fishing by a single group being 40% (Kelly 2013:Table 3–1). There are major environmental differences within the region, but even more differences in social organization. Around 50 languages, most within six major language families, are spoken in the NWNA (Turner 2014). The population densities are substantial. Furthermore, many NWNA groups, especially those along the coast, are famous as examples of relatively sedentary foragers with hierarchical, social structure–focused lineages and permanent villages headed by hereditary chiefs. These are characteristics more common to some village agriculturalists and pastoralists than most modern hunter-gatherers. Turner and Davis (1993; see also Turner 2014) provide a detailed discussion of foods eaten by Indigenous peoples during food shortages. Food shortages can be due to unusually stormy winter or spring weather or failure of fish runs or animal hunts, as well as intergroup conflicts. Food shortages are more common inland and among groups farther north. Turner and Davis document over 100 plants used during times of shortages and divide these plants into four type categories: (1) important normally consumed plants, where consumption is intensified during shortages; (2) secondary or supplementary foods, where consumption is increased during shortages; (3) “true” famine foods, those that are eaten only during shortages; and (4) hunger suppressants. The first two categories are the most common, with 44 plants listed as Type 1 and 40 or more plants in Type 2. The other types are far less common: Type 3 has 6 or more taxa, and Type 4 has 19 or more plants. The large number of plants used as hunger suppressants in the NWNA is remarkable, being unlike any other case study and requiring more study. Complicating this region-wide enumeration is the issue discussed for other foraging groups; that is, the same plant can have different status among neighboring groups. As shown in chapter 2 (table 5), the famine foods used in the NWNA are quite different from other parts of the world. In fact, the inventory of plant famine foods is unique. According to Turner and Davis, fruits constitute 70% of the recorded famine foods. In contrast, the average percentage of fruit famine foods for North America is 31% (Moerman 1998),

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and the average from the subsample from Freedman’s worldwide database is 33%. Nancy Turner (personal communication 2019) suggests that, like the circumpolar examples, the large number of fruits recorded as famine foods is due to the relative abundance of fruits that remain on the plants over winter, offering foods during times of otherwise low food availability. In a sense, these fruits or berries are storage on the bush, providing the major backup that can be used when more preferred resources become unavailable. Labor normally expended to acquire more preferred foods could be shifted to harvesting these berries and fruits if needed. A second striking pattern for the NWNA sample is the importance of inner bark of conifers. The species whose inner bark is used that Turner and Davis list include 10 species in Type 1, three in Type 2, three in Type 3, and 1 or more in Type 4. In comparison, inner bark comprises 2% of the famine foods in Freedman’s database, and for the general North American database, it is 7%. Clearly, inner bark is a more important famine food in the NWNA compared with other parts of the world. However, the number of trees whose

Figure 5 Common bearberry, or kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), with edible berries available even with some snow cover (photograph courtesy of Nancy Turner).

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inner bark is eaten during shortages may underestimate the importance of these foods, because these figures do not consider the scale of exploitation of each tree species, just the number of species used.

Famine Foods Among Hunter-Gatherers The four areas discussed here contrast starkly. The circumpolar region is an interesting contrast to southern Africa and Australia. Their flora environments could not be more different, and the role of plants varies greatly, even though many would consider the three “marginal for human occupation,” an outmoded and not very useful view since people have successfully lived in these regions for millennia. It was specifically noted for the San, Aboriginal Australians, and Inuit that despite their differences, the processes of famine food use are similar. Less preferred foods are used after more preferred foods are not available in sufficient quantities to feed the population. Eidlitz conceives of specific plant food use during shortages not as a distinct and mutually exclusive category of plants but rather as a ranking of food preference: At first, people usually ate more of what they normally ate in smaller quantities and did not fully utilize—more plants, more fish, and other shellfish. Then they turned to plants and fish that were not normally eaten, followed by animals and parts of animals that were not usually consumed. The next stage was to slaughter domestic animals that would not have been eaten under normal circumstances because they served other purposes, e.g., draught animals, milk animals, draught dogs, draught reindeer or, indeed, all reindeer if the herd was small. After this, people ate skins: tent skins, clothes, shoes, and boots. Finally, they ate corpses while even earth was sometimes used in extreme cases [1969:128].

We will see that this is a common process for all human communities when eating foods during shortages. What is different for the first three groups compared with the majority of humanity today is that they have a low population density. So, even though the Kalahari Desert, central Australia, and the circumpolar region are

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typically considered hard places to make a living because of harsh climates and sometimes limited edible biomass, the knowledge of plant foods available during food shortages is no more robust than for other, non-foraging groups as we will see in the next chapter. Northwestern North America is a starker contrast in that the population densities and social organization of many groups, particularly those along the coasts, are more like village farmers than other modern-day huntergatherers. This can be seen in the unusual distribution of famine foods for this region (table 5). Fruits are overwhelmingly the major famine foods, followed by tubers/roots and inner bark. Leaves/greens, which tend to be major famine foods worldwide, are only 5% of the total. As Clarke (2007) among others suggests, the key characteristics of most hunter-gatherers is flexibility in seasonal food use so rigid definition of food categories may be difficult if not especially inappropriate for these types of economies. This flexibility is not passive and random movement over the landscape looking for edible items. Rather, it is a result of Indigenous peoples’ sophisticated and detailed mapping of their landscapes, its seasonal variations, and the location and abundance of resources. Sophisticated does not mean comprehensive. As examples in this chapter and the following two chapters show, there often are plants not necessarily known to be edible by one group but used by others. The definition of famine food use among hunter-gatherers is not straightforward. As we have seen here and will see in case studies to follow, a variety of foods are consumed during food shortages, and many of these are foods normally consumed although in more limited quantities. Scholars have long recognized that the study of hunter-gatherers offers an imperfect but useful window into how human ancestors lived, with important implications for modern human diet and health. Study of low-preference foods is also useful as these communities have a detailed knowledge of local environments, its edible resources, and the ways of making foods consumable, even those that would appear at first not to be suitable for a human diet. The four examples summarized here represent a small fraction of the diversity of earth’s biodiversity and human adaptive knowledge. This is particularly true for tropical forest, which comprises a large percentage of the world’s area and floral diversity.

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In sum, what this small assemblage of case studies of the use of famine foods by hunter-gatherer shows us is that there are significant differences in what people eat during food shortages. It also leads to the conclusion that while foragers may not have been or be members of the “original affluent society,” the small number of famine foods seems to have been sufficient to support their relatively low population densities.

Four

Examples Villages and Rural Farming Communities

My first child also died because there wasn’t enough to eat. The child was already two at the time. He was so hungry. He saw other people chewing maize cobs, so he picked one up too, but he couldn’t digest it because it was so hard. Bits of the cob got stuck in his throat and he couldn’t breathe. —Recollection by a survivor of the Chinese famine of 1958–1962 (cited in Zhou 2013:146)

A

griculture caused one of the most profound transformations in the human condition since the appearance of modern humans. It altered a whole host of ecological, social, and cultural relationships. New plants and animals were added to the ecological mix, and basic environmental conditions, such as hydrology and soil fertility, were modified, often extensively. It also greatly changed human nutrition and health. Staples such as carbohydrate-rich cereal grains and root crops became more substantial parts of the diet, leading often to nutrition deficiencies and deteriorated dental health. Changes in disease vectors and the lethality of epidemics were altered due to the larger and denser populations agriculture allowed, which tend to be more sedentary than hunter-gatherers. Demography and social relationships within and between human groups were changed in many ways that have not been reversible. Populations grow larger and denser, ownership of desirable farmland becomes more guarded, competition for resources intensifies, and economic specialization becomes more common. Not all of these changes occurred in all places, in the exact same ways, or at the same time. However, from the broadest scan of human history since the

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development of cultivation nearly 10 millennia ago, the wide-ranging alterations to human lives and our environments due to agriculture are apparent. Needless to say, farming also alters the use of famine foods in three direct ways. First, changes in famine food use can be due to ecological changes and the mix of edible species available. Plants often less common in nonagricultural environments, such as weedy annuals, can become very abundant in and around agricultural fields and more permanent settlements. A study of wild plant food use in northern Nigeria hints at this change. The majority of “wild” foods documented in this study were found in fields or fallowed plots (Harris and Mohammed 2003), not native plant habitats. It is not stated whether this is due to the proximity of these foods in fields, the destruction of native biotic communities that reduced some habitats and the availability of native food plants, or both. A second change is the increase in storage. It is true that foragers in areas with strong seasonal changes that limit food acquisition curate sufficient stores to sustain themselves during the season when food is scarce. As mentioned in the last chapter, Australian Aboriginal groups cache foods for future use (Latz 1995), and groups in northwestern North America can gather enormous amounts of consumables, such as anadromous fish, that are extremely abundant for part of the year (Moss 2011; Turner 2014; Turner and Davis 1993). Nonetheless and as a general rule, farmers, especially those in temperate regions, need to harvest sufficient crops to last until the next harvest. The amount of stored crops can be substantial. It has been estimated that the average per capita maize consumption by the Hopi of Arizona during the nineteenth century was 314 kg, and this does not include other crops (Stephens 1936). Since the Hopi lived in aggregated villages and tried to keep several years’ worth of maize, the required storage space would have been substantial. Tropical farmers and those in locations with exceptionally long growing seasons permitting multiple annual cropping may be able to even out food availability, mitigating the need to store as much as other farmers. In addition, some root crops, such as bitter manioc, can be stored in-ground for some period of time. Even under these circumstances, wet season/dry season conditions may limit year-round farming. While crop storage among

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farmers can be contingent on the specifics of the local setting, food storage among most village farmers is a necessity. There are problems with storage as discussed in chapter 1. First, stored food supplies are vulnerable to expropriation by authorities, by reciprocal obligations to members of the same community, or theft by neighbors and outside groups. Second, of greater concern is predation by insects, animals, and diseases. As mentioned earlier, it has been estimated that 18%–20% of harvest yields are lost worldwide to predation, and the figure is higher in developing countries (Sharma et al. 2017). The third major change in famine food use with agriculture is obvious: the addition of crops that introduces a whole new suite of food plants. These can be consumed in normal ways or, if need be, eaten in atypical ways. Farming also provides agricultural refuse and byproducts not normally eaten by humans, again a new set of potential famine foods. Corncobs as a famine food were obviously not available before the domestication of maize. Agricultural materials not usually eaten by humans have become a major category of famine food, as we will see in chapter 5. In fact, it appears that agricultural byproducts were often one of the most commonly used famine foods; many famine foods consumed in the countryside during the Chinese famine of 1958–1961 were from crops. This is described by a municipal investigation report for Shandong Province from 1959: From spring to early summer when food first became scarce, people supplemented their diet with chaff, tree bark, and weeds. Some locals told us they had eaten at least fifty different types of food supplements during this time, including leaves from the scholar’s tree and castor-oil plant, grass for feeding pigs, young stems from the tree of heaven, wheat husks, sorghum flowers, grass seeds, coarse chaff, corn husks, peanut skins, bean leaves, potato sprouts, elm bark, and watermelon rind [cited in Zhou 2012:4; underlining added to emphasize the number of famine foods from crops].

Later, villagers had to forage farther afield, up to 10 km from their homes, and ate young crop plants, a practice actively discouraged by officials. Use of agricultural refuse and byproducts is not limited to village farmers. As considered in chapter 2, agricultural refuse may have more nutritional value

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than is often assumed. The use of these resources seems to increase with nations and urban populations as discussed in the next chapter. An additional possible consequence of agriculture may be the “Scudder Hypothesis,” that agriculturalists have a broader knowledge and use of edible foods than hunter-gatherers. In short, Scudder (1971) suggested that agriculturalists with their generally higher population densities have a greater need than foragers for backup foods in the event of crop failure. This topic is discussed in detail at the end of this chapter. The social, political, and economic organization of village agriculturalists, whether tightly integrated into nations or not, is variable, and this variation can affect the use of famine foods. Broadly speaking, agricultural villagers can have little or weak centralized decision-making by leaders, while others have clear leaders whose authority extends to the production, distribution, and consumption of foods, including those eaten during food shortages. The lack of powerful leaders, however, does not imply the absence of decisionmaking beyond households and lineages. There are numerous culturally appropriate ways for communities to develop consensus in the absence of formal leaders. Centralized decision-making or control by leaders affects all members of that society. Elites may have favored diets with choice foods and amounts compared with commoners under normal circumstances, and they often have access to more food during food shortages. There are also examples of leaders having to decide whether to eat foods normally tabooed for elites but not for commoners as cited in chapter 2. On the other hand, they may be expected to provide food from their stores for commoners during times of food stress. Nearly all rural village agriculturalists are now integrated into nations, and markets differ from those who for millennia were largely independent or parts of small and less hierarchical groups. Connections with a national government can have advantages as well as disadvantages. Some of the most devastating famines of the twentieth century were initiated or made far worse because of national governmental actions, and the severity often was worse for rural areas. Ill-advised collectivization and other agricultural policies in the Stalinist Soviet Union dramatically affected rural agricultural community infrastructure, organization, and production in many areas, resulting in increased deaths and dislocation (e.g., Applebaum 2017;

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Cameron 2018; Conquest 1986; Noack et al. 2014b). Tragically and almost inexplicably, the horrendous consequence of too- rapid and ill-advised Soviet agricultural collectivization on rural communities in the 1930s were replicated later in Mao’s China (Dikötter 2010; Zhou 2012) in the middle of the twentieth century, in Ethiopia under the Derg led by Mengistu Haile Mariam (Keneally 2011), and later in a different manner in Cambodia/Kampuchea under Pol Pot (Ea 1984). Adding to these negative consequences for rural communities are governmental efforts to confiscate food from households and merchants, often redirected to feed the more politically powerful cities, actions that occurred in colonial India, the Soviet Union, and China, or maintain food exports in the face of national food shortages, as occurred in Ireland (Coogan 2012; Woodham-Smith 1962) and elsewhere. Obviously, there can be advantages to being part of nations for village agriculturalists during food shortages. Relief supplies extend the food catchment beyond the specific locality through national and international food distribution. Options for wage labor can become available. A major action by British colonial administrators during Indian famines was creating massive infrastructure projects offering wage labor to destitute peasants. An African example of the effects of wage labor on famine food use documented that wild food use did not increase during food shortages among villages in rural Zimbabwe in the 1980s because of access to non-farm wage labor and governmental food distribution (Zinyama et al. 1990). Collection of wild foods was the fourth most common strategy; the first three were buying maize-meal from stores, buying other grains, and seeking wage labor opportunities. Three fruits were important famine foods: baobob (Adansonia digitata), jackalberry (Diospyros mespiliformis), and black monkey orange (Strychnos madagascariensis). The interviewees also did not indicate an increase in the use of wild foods as the shortage continued. It should be noted that there was variation in the use of wild foods during food shortages among the seven villages in this study. No interviewee from three villages reported using wild plants. In the other villages, 11%–48% of the respondents mentioned gathering wild plants (Zinyama et al. 1990:Table 2). One wonders if the use of native plant foods and other famine foods would have been different had the shortage become even more intense and widespread,

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the ability to buy foodstuffs from the market had ceased, or the availability of wage labor was curtailed. But, clearly, relief supplies and the option of wage labor were major responses in this case, reducing the need to forage for native famine foods. The three groups considered in this chapter share some characteristics. First, they are rural and are closely embedded in their local environment. Often, they have had decades-, centuries-, and even millennia-long familiarity with making a living from local resources, so it is not surprising that they normally have an in-depth ecological knowledge of the edible landscape. The first are Indigenous groups in the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico. This example is especially interesting because it takes a historical perspective, arguing for change in the use of famine foods through a long time frame. The second example, and one of the best documented, is part of a long-term study with the Gwembe Tonga of southern Africa and their responses to relocation due to dam construction and flooding of ancestral lands. Finally, we consider the Fringe Enga and other communities in Highland Papua New Guinea, groups historically with tenuous relationships with central governments.

U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico The U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico (SW/NW) had a rich and long history of many Indigenous peoples (Plog 2008) who lived in a rich tapestry of environments, including deserts, plains, and mountains (Brown 1982). The subsistence economy of many groups was based on Mesoamericanderived crops, especially maize, supplemented with some locally domesticated cultigens and many native plants. Nutritional assays are available for many of these (e.g., Kuhnlein et al. 1979; Wolfe et al. 1985). The importance of agriculture varies. The Puebloan groups of New Mexico, Tarahumara of Chihuahua, and Akimel O’Odham (formerly Pima) of Arizona were first and foremost farmers. Others, such as the Tohono O’Odham (formerly Papago) of Arizona and Sonora and Navajo and Apache of New Mexico and Arizona, did some farming but in more mixed economies. Others, such as the Seri of coastal Sonora, were forager-fishers.

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The Spanish explored and then colonized this region beginning in the sixteenth century and affected distinct Indigenous groups differently. In some regions, such as far northern Chihuahua, Indigenous groups did not survive Spanish colonization; in other regions, such as the territories of the O’Odham, Puebloans, Navajo, and Apache, the changes during Spanish control were very substantial, although not uniform even among these different cultures. Nonetheless, the use of foods changed with the introduction of livestock, field crops, orchard plants, farming techniques, and land-tenure patterns in addition to general economic and political changes. These also altered what were considered famine foods. A total of 59 taxa have been recorded as famine foods for native groups in the SW/NW divided into seven broad categories: inner bark (4); cacti (10); agave and related plants (6); perennials, mostly fruits (18); underground structures (5); annuals (14); and other (2). Tables 4 and 11 enumerate these plants by their parts used so we can compare the SW/NW with other areas. Specifically, this database has fewer roots/tubers and more leaves from annuals than the overall North American list. Given that much of the SW/NW is arid to semiarid, the small number of roots/tubers is unexpected. Let us focus on one group in the U.S. Southwest. The Hopi of northern Arizona are farmers who developed remarkably clever ways, such as sand dune farming, to grow crops in a very arid region and whose ethnobotany and dietary patterns have been better studied than many other groups in the SW/NW (Bradfield 1971; Whiting 1939). Publications on Hopi food plants go back to at least the end of the nineteenth century (e.g., Fewkes 1896; Hough 1989), with Whiting (1939) as the baseline reference. Maize is the most important crop both nutritionally and culturally, but the Hopi cultivate approximately 40 plant species, a number of which were introduced since Spanish contact (Whiting 1939). Kuhnlein and Calloway (1977) collated a list with 120 Hopi food plants going back over a century, with nearly 90 being uncultivated plants. Comparison of these documents shows that there have been some changes in food consumption from a traditional diet to one that includes many outside foods. While the contemporary Hopi diet incorporated many nontraditional Hopi food items (Kuhnlein and Calloway 1977), there still seems to be a general stability in crop varieties noted by Whiting (1936) and later by Soleri and Cleveland (1993).

Ta b l e   11 Famine Foods of the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico Common Name

Scientific Namea

Part Used

Allscale Aspen Barrel cactus Blazing Star

Atriplex polycarpa Populus tremuloides Ferocactus wislizeni Mentzelia pumila Mentzelia multiflora Dichelostemma pulchellum Habenaria sparsiflora Opuntia imbricata Pachycereus pringlei Agave sp. Agave cerulata subsp. dentiens Opuntia clavate Washingtonia filifera Zostera martina Thelypodium integrifolium Sphaeralcea coccinea Chenopodium spp. Quercus grisea Physalis hederifolia Oryzopsis hymenoides Sysymbrium irio Simmondsia chinensis Rhizophora mangle Apodanthera undulata Prosopis glandulosa Phoradendron junipeinrum Solanum fendleri Solanum trifolium Juniperus monosperma Stenocereus thuberi Acacia pennatula Agave parryi Amaranthus spp. Pinus edulis Pinus ponderosa Stenocereus alamosensis Opuntia polyacantha Atriplex lentiformis Cleome serrulate

Seed Inner bark Fruit Seed Seed Tuber Bulb Stem Fruit Rosette Leaf liquid Stem Stem pith Seed Greens Root Seed Fruit Fruit Seed Greens Fruit Fruit Fruit Fruit Fruit and seed Tuber Fruit Inner bark and fruit Fruit Fruit and seed Rosette ? Inner bark Inner bark Fruit Stem Seed Greens (continued )

Bluedick Bog orchid Cane cactus Cardon cactus Century plant Cholla cactus Desert palm Eelgrass Foxtail Globemallow Goosefoot Gray oak Groundcherry Indian ricegrass London rocket Jojoba Mangrove Melon loco Mesquite Mistletoe Nightshade One-seeded Juniper Organ pipe cactus Palo garabo Parry’s agave Pigweed Piñon pine Ponderosa pine Pitaya agria cactus Plains prickly pear Quail bush Rocky Mountain beeweed

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Ta b l e   11 (continued) Common Name Rose Saguaro Screwbean Seepwillow Small groundcherry Sotol Spiny sow thistle Squaw current Wavyleaf oak Whipple cactus Wild potato Wolfberry Yucca No common nameb

Scientific Namea Rosa arizonica Carnegiea gigantea Prosopis pubescens Baccharis glutinosa Chamaesaracha coronopus Dasylirion wheeleri Sonchus asper Ribes inebrians Quercus undulata Opuntia whipplei Solanum jamesii Lycium pallidum Yucca spp. Yucca glauca Acanthochiton wrightii Dicoria brandegeei

Part Used Fruit Stem pulp Fruit Greens Fruit Rosette Greens Fruit Fruit Fruit Tuber Fruit Rosette Rosette Greens Flower and fruit

Source: Adapted from Minnis 1992:Table 1. a Scientific names are those in the original citation with minor spelling corrections. b In addition, there are references to indistinct types such as “weed,” “grass,” etc.

Kuhnlein and Calloway (1977:165), citing data from 1900 to the 1970s, did note a decrease in the number of wild greens eaten, stating, “Today wild greens are a seasonal item for some Hopi . . . [and] drying for year-round use no longer is common.” Whiting (1936) specifically identified 15 plants with 18 parts used as Hopi famine foods (table 12). Fruits (9) are the most common followed by seeds (4), stems (3), greens (1), and flowers (1). This list differs from others in several interesting ways. Several categories are missing. The lack of roots/ tubers is the most unexpected, because many arid land plants use underground storage structures that are potentially edible by humans. No bark and a small number of greens are listed. No agricultural byproducts are listed as Hopi famine foods despite the importance of crops. The difference between the specific Hopi inventory of famine foods and those listed for the SW/NW is striking and again suggests that there are substantial differences in famine food use within regions.

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F i g ure 6 Hopi fields in normally dry drainages showing the aridity of their environment. A Hopi village is on the mesa in the far background (photograph courtesy of the author).

While most data for the SW/NW are from north of the international border in the United States, there is a study of wild plants used during a drought in the late 1980s and food shortage among the Mountain Pima of Chihuahua, which is the most comprehensive examination of the topic for an Indigenous group in northern Mexico (Laferriére 1992). Laferriére notes that wild plants probably played more of an important role in provisioning the community during droughts in the past because wage labor and selling livestock would not have been available response options as they are today. A number of plants were important during droughts: prickly pear pads (stems) and fruits (Opuntia spp.), weedy greens (Amaranthus hybridus, Portulaca oleracea, Chenopodium leptophyllum), capelín fruits (Prunus serotina var. virens), ahuasiqui fruits (P. gentry), pato amarillo fruits (Berberis pimana), tomatillo fruits (Physalis spp.), tulusin fruits (Jaltomata procumbens), madroño fruits (Arbutus xalapensis and A. arizonica), manzanilla fruits (Arctostaphylos pungens), and the roots of saraviqui (Prionosciadium townsendii). A second category is plants that were used occasionally during good years but were used

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Ta b l e   12 Hopi Famine Foods Category Cacti

Perennial

Annuals

Common Name Plains prickly pear Prickly pear Whipple cholla Indian ricegrass Mesquite One-seed juniper Wild currant Wild rose Wolfberry

Blazing star Blazing star Small groundcherry Tomatillo

Plant

Part Used

Opuntia polyacantha Opuntia sp. Opuntia whipplei Oryzopsis hymenoides Prosopis glandulosa Juniperus monosperma Ribes inebrians Rosa arizonica Lycium pallidum Acanthochiton wrightii Dicoria brandegeei Mentzelia pumila Mentzelia multiflora Chamaesaracha coronopus Physalis hederifolia

Stem Stem Stem and fruit Seed Fruit and seed Fruit Fruit Fruit Fruit Greens Flower and fruit Seed Seed Fruit Fruit

Source: Whiting 1939.

more extensively during the drought: chuguilla agave rosettes and emergent inflorescences (Agave shrevei subsp. matapensis), cebollín bulbs (Hymenocallis pimana), acorns (Quercus spp.), and kachana tubers (Dahlia coccinea and D. sherffii). Except for bark, the types of plant parts used by the Mountain Pima and on the general SW/NW list of famine foods are similar. Two differences between the SW/NW and North America as a whole and the Mountain Pima stand out. Fruits are somewhat more commonly considered famine foods by the Mountain Pima, and the low number of tubers/underground structures is unexpected for the same reason as for the Hopi. What makes the SW/NW example especially useful is that the ethnographic record of famine food use can be compared with the use of plants by the ancient ancestors of Indigenous groups in this region to reconstruct as much as possible historical changes in diet. In particular, we can examine prehispanic food use through the study of actual plant remains from archaeological sites as well as those found in paleofeces recovered from archaeological deposits. In addition, isotopic studies of human bones and analyses of

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dental calculus can provide insights into general diet. It could be argued that the SW/NW has some of the most comprehensive archaeological datasets for prehistoric peoples’ dietary reconstruction from before farming to the origin and development of agriculture-centered economies over a variety of ecological settings (e.g., Adams 2004; Fish 2004; Huckell and Toll 2004). In short, I have argued elsewhere that what are now ethnographically documented famine foods seem to have been common foods for ancestors of SW/ NW groups as documented in the archaeological record (Minnis 1991). This may indicate either that the ancient people experienced food shortages very frequently or that Spanish contact and colonial control affected plant food preference and use patterns. The first possibility is less likely. Surely, ancient peoples of the SW/NW experienced times of food deprivation, and some of these times could have been quite severe, having caused or contributed to major historical, cultural, and demographic changes. However, remains of maize are some of the most common from archaeological deposits, and maize is the dominant constituent in paleofeces found in ancient ruins of the northern SW/NW (Minnis 1989). If food shortages were the norm, then we would not expect maize to be so abundant in the archaeological record. The second explanation is more likely. The Spanish colonized the SW/ NW during the 1500s–1600s, and this region became the far northern frontier of their empire in the Western Hemisphere and part of the much wider Columbian exchange. As is common in the far reaches of colonial frontiers, control was geographically spotty. Where influences and control were strongest, such as the upper Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico or Sonora, Mexico, the food ways of Indigenous peoples were altered in many profound ways (Dunmire 2004). New crops were introduced such as chile, various legumes, wheat, and peaches. Domesticated animals, including chickens, cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep, were also added. Furthermore, farming techniques, concepts of land ownership, and foraging territories changed. Finally, traditional patterns for adapting to food problems such as migration were limited by Spanish control (Cordell 1999). All of these changes, I suspect, led to a reorienting of food preference patterns, with what were common seasonal or supplementary foods in the past becoming famine foods postcontact. As we have seen, another major difference with North America as a whole is the larger number of greens and leaves, except for the Hopi, which again

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demonstrates intraregional variation. However, this category only includes 13% of the famine foods listed for the SW/NW, so the issue is the low number of leaves and greens for other North American groups rather than the higher number of leaves and greens reported for the SW/NW. In fact, 13% is very low compared with the percentage of leaves (28%) for the sample from Freedman’s (2019) worldwide database (table 3), high compared with the percentage (3%) of leaves/stalks listed as “supplementary” foods for the !Kung San who inhabit an arid area, and low compared with the Rajasthan example (table 4), a semiarid to arid area where leaves account for around 30% of the famine foods. Given the high variability of leaves as famine foods in semiarid to arid areas, the use of leaves as famine foods by SW/NW communities may not be especially anomalous, but this example illustrates yet again the necessity for understanding the specific area. One of the most striking patterns in the types of famine food cataloged for the SW/NW is the lack of references to agriculture refuse—such as corncobs and stalks, cereal grain chaff, or the leaves of beans and cucurbits—being consumed during food shortages. As discussed in chapter 2 and the following chapter, agricultural refuse and byproducts are common famine foods for rural communities. It may well be that the lower population densities of farming populations in the SW/NW, often concentrated in specific locations, provided the opportunity, if needed, to temporarily use surrounding areas as catchments for native famine foods.

Gwembe Tonga and Their Neighbors in Southern Africa There has been a long history of research on famine foods of southern Africa. Hely-Hutchinson (1898:51) wrote to the British colonial government in Pietermaritzburg (now in South Africa) with a list of 37 famine foods used in Zululand and quoted a colleague as saying, “So long as there is rain enough for the wild salads and spinaches to grow, the natives, although they may suffer from want of food, will never starve.” A governmental official then forwarded this letter to the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, adding the comment, “None of the plants appear to possess any special merit beyond the fact that they withstand prolonged drought, are accessible, and have no marked del-

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F i g u re 7 Gwembe Tonga village and millet fields (photograph courtesy of Thayer Scudder).

eterious properties.” The obvious and lamentable irony is that saving Indigenous people from starvation evidently did not constitute “special merit” to that colonial official. Some of the best work on Africa famine food use involved a long-term study with the Gwembe Tonga. This research has been followed by other excellent studies in southern Africa. The Gwembe Tonga are agriculturalists in the middle Zambezi River valley of Zambia that has woodland savanna vegetation. They were the focus of extensive anthropological investigations in the 1950s because 50,000 Tonga were being relocated due to dam construction on the Zambezi River that inundated their ancestral lands (Colson 1960, 1979; Scudder 1962, 1971). Traditional Gwembe Tonga agriculture centered on grains such as millets and maize along with some cash crops, especially tobacco and peanuts. They also cultivated “several leguminous crops,” “various cucurbits,” and “less important vegetables” (Scudder 1971:11). The Gwembe Tonga human population density was 100 times greater than for hunter-gatherers of southern Africa.

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The Gwembe Tonga studies are interesting for three reasons. The first is documentation of traditional Tongan subsistence and use of the landscape. The second is that the knowledge of edible flora by the agricultural Tonga can be compared with San knowledge to help understand how farming changes human-environmental interactions. Third, this long-term study illuminates how groups adjust to new environments; for example, do they simply try to map traditional activities, information, and perception into a new landscape? All three relate in various degrees to the use of famine foods. Scudder’s (1971:Appendix) list has 141 plant species used by the Gwembe Tonga. The actual number is a little higher because individual edible mushroom species are not identified. These plants are “vegetable relishes” (45%, mostly leaves), fruits and nuts (37%), tuberous parts (11%), grass seeds (6%), and less than 1% mushrooms. The large number of edible native foods is consistent with estimates for other areas in southern Africa. Ogle and Grivetti (1985) obtained an inventory of 220 edible plants recorded by survey respondents in Swaziland, and 241 edible plants are listed for the Zambezian woodlands (Malaisse and Parent 1985). Scudder (1962:Table  21) also lists famine foods used by the Gwembe Tonga. He notes that five of the 32 had not been eaten for the past 20 years and that “we would not be surprised if a number of plants (especially those gathered from tubers over a generation ago) were unknowingly omitted” (Scudder 1962:213). Of the 32 plant famine foods, there were 9 (28%) grass seeds, 7 (22%) seeds from other plants, 1 (3%) fruit, and 15 (47%) tubers or bulbs. A substantial number of these resources (9/32) require an unusual amount of processing to remove poisonous substances. This inventory is unusual because of lack of evidence for the use of leaves and few fruits in addition to having a relatively large number of tuberous resources. The lack of leaves as famine foods is especially remarkable given the large number of leaves used in vegetable relishes. This anomaly may be a definitional issue. The amount of leaves normally consumed simply increased during shortages and therefore they were not considered famine foods. How much information about potential native famine foods has been retained by the Gwembe Tonga is unclear. A summary of Gwembe Tongan life 50 years after relocation does not mention the use of native plant products except a short phrase indicating that some households make money by

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selling forest products (Cliggett et al. 2007). Their current primary economic activities are subsistence and market-oriented farming and out-migration from the region. As you will recall from the last chapter, Lee documented 30 plants used as “supplementary foods” used by the San of southern Africa. The greatest difference between the San and the Gwembe Tonga information is the importance of edible gums among the San and the lack of their use by the Gwembe Tonga. The clearest similarity is the importance of tubers or bulbs. It is difficult to compare fruits/seeds/berries because they are not classified the same by Lee and Scudder. For example, the mongongo nut is listed by Lee as a “fruit,” which it is botanically, but is listed as a “seed” by Scudder, which fits the common English classification of foods. In both cases, the lack of evidence for the use of leaves is unusual given the importance of leaves as famine foods worldwide and their value in traditional Gwembe Tongan cuisine.

Highland Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea is a large island with a complex ethnographic landscape with many different communities, 85% of whom live in rural agricultural settings (Allen and Bourke 2001). There are at least 400 edible plant foods, both cultivated and native, recorded from Papua New Guinea (Bourke and Harwood 2009; Vile 2013). Despite the popular image of Papua New Guinea as traditional and unchanging, farmers there have added many plants over the centuries. Sweet potato replaced taro (Colocasia esculenta) as the most common staple in the distant past, and agricultural introductions continue today. Plants originally from the Western Hemisphere, such as potato, peanut, and cassava, have become important. It is estimated that 60% of the crops grown in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea were introduced during the past half-century (Bourke 2009). Food shortages (taim hangre in New Guinea Pidgin) were not uncommon. Bourke (2017) lists six major droughts that resulted in severe food shortages since 1900. Several scholars have studied how these agriculturalists

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F i g u r e 8 Chimbu man in ceremonial dress and his fields in Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea (photograph courtesy of Karl Rambo).

cope with food shortages, often caused by droughts and by unusually severe frosts that kill sweet potatoes, the primary crop that sustains people and pigs. Bourke (1988) summarizes plant foods used during food shortages in Highland Papua New Guinea recorded at 18 locations by a number of researchers. Too much of the information is incompletely presented to tabulate the types of plant parts used, but the list includes more than 60 plants with tubers, with the most widely used being those of pueraria (Pueraria spp.) and wild yams (Dioscorea spp.). The Fringe Enga (Tinjipaka) of Papua New Guinea provide an example of food use during food shortages. The 150,000 Enga live in the central New Guinea Highlands having varied environments (Waddell 1972). The Fringe Enga live in the higher mountain valleys whereas the Central Enga live in lower-elevation valleys in the mountains. The Enga are first and foremost agriculturalists. Sweet potato is the most important crop, with taro a secondary tuberous crop with a total of 43 cultivated plant species. In addition, pigs are a critical part of their economic and cultural life. The Enga living at lower elevations have a more diverse crop assemblage than the Fringe Enga. Exacerbating risk for the higher elevation Fringe Enga is the fact that their

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crops are more vulnerable to frost, despite using ingenious techniques to mitigate the severity. Sweet potatoes, for example, are planted on mounds composed of green matter and soil. This places the plant above groundhugging frost, provides some heat generated from the decomposition of the green matter, and reduces waterlogging during wet weather. As with many traditional farmers, they also mitigate risk by planting multiple field locations in different ecological settings. But these farming techniques did not always work. Waddell (1972, 1975) studied a severe, crop-killing frost in 1972. Unlike earlier food shortages, national and international aid efforts provided substantial food assistance. In addition, he points out that many frost-tolerant crops have been added since 1941, making the highland farming systems more resilient than in the past (Waddell 1989). With their fields at high elevations, the Fringe Enga were nonetheless severely impacted by the frost. Their primary strategy to survive the food shortage was to migrate to Central Enga villages. These villagers welcomed the Fringe Enga as allies against hostile neighboring communities. The Fringe Enga also slaughtered pigs, a form of dietary insurance and storage on the hoof. Because of the migration out of the highlands, use of local famine foods was reduced, but Waddell does mention a few. First, the Fringe Enga ate what frost-damaged sweet potatoes they could before the tubers rotted to inedibility. The introduced white potato is more frost tolerant than the sweet potato, and its frost-damaged tubers were edible longer than sweet potato tubers, extending the time before the most serious food scarcity began. Individuals gleaned fields for any edible foods. In addition, people ate inferior tubers in old mounds that were normally fed to pigs. They also increased consumption of local plants known to be edible. The pandanus nut (Pandanus sp.) was the most important food source during shortages as well as being a trade item during periods of food abundance. During food shortages pandanus nuts seem to have been gathered more intensely, both for local consumption and for barter. In addition, some wild plants were gathered, chiefly for their greens, by those remaining in the highland area. Four were especially important: black nightshade (Solanum nigrum), field celery (Oenanthe javanica), field mustard (Brassica cf. campestris), and a dayflower (Commelina diffusa) (Waddell 1975). Other famine foods used by the Fringe Enga include

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the greens of various mustards, bitter cress (Cardamine sp.), Brassica spp. (wild), watercress (Nasturtium officinale), ferns (such as Dryopteris hirtipes and Cyathea sp.), dinner plate fig (Ficus dammaropsis), morning glory (Ipomoea sp.) vines, young cordyline shoots, immature ears of silver grass (Miscanthus floridulus), and cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica) (Clarke 1989; Waddell 1989). Sillitoe (1993) considers food shortages among the Wola of the Southern Highlands. Food shortages occurred, but according to his informants, the last time anyone died of starvation during food shortages was in the 1920s–1930s. A total of 54 plant parts from 50 plants are listed as famine foods: leaves and fronds (44%), fruits and seeds (37%), stems and palm hearts (11%), roots/tubers (6%), and other plant parts (2%). The three most important plants consumed during food shortages are wild yam tubers (Dioscorea spp.), pueraria roots (Pueraria lobata), and cane grass inflorescences (Saccharum robustum). These are different from the most important famine foods used by the Fringe Enga. The importance of leaves and fruits/seeds are, as discussed in chapter 2, similar to the worldwide pattern. The one difference is the low number of roots, although two of the three most important famine foods were tubers and roots so the importance of tubers is masked by their low number compared with other plant parts. There are other examples of famine food use by Papua New Guineans. According to Haley (2001:186), “The Hewa survived the drought by subsisting on famine foods available to them,” including tulip leaves (Gnetum gnemon), pumpkin leaves (Cucurbita moschata), pueraria roots (Pueraria lobata), local breadfruit, and tree fern fronds. Nineteen famine foods are recorded for the Lake Kopiago region of the Southern Highlands: nine leaves, eight tubers/ roots, one fruit, and one not specified (Robinson 2001). Vile (2013) compiled a list of 30 famine foods used during the 1997–1998 drought and frost. While the plant names are provided, the way they were used is not. He specifically mentioned that banana corms (Musa spp.) were consumed even though that reduced future harvests. Allen and Bourke (2001) list common famine foods in Papua New Guinea, many of which are also normal rations: tulip nuts, cassava, coconuts (Coco nucifera), mango (Mangifera spp.), ferns, fig leaves, sea almond (Terminalia catappa), banana corms, self-sown yams (Dioscorea spp.), green paw paw fruits (Carica papaya), and pueraria (Pueraria sp.)

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roots. There are many potential famine foods available to those living in highland Papua New Guinea, with yams, pandanus nuts, and pueraria roots seeming to be especially valuable. But again, as in the other examples, there are differences in famine food use even among neighboring groups or communities within the same region.

Famine Food Use Among Village Agriculturalists There is pronounced variation among village agriculturalists today and in the past stretching back thousands of years. Consequently, we would not expect the use of famine foods to be the same for all of them. Still, there are some commonalities that contrast them to traditional foragers. The most obvious one is the availability of agricultural products. This includes consumption of crops stored in anticipation of hunger seasons or more catastrophic food shortages. The Hopi of Arizona, as an example, try to keep many years of maize available for times of reduced yields. It also includes increased consumption of damaged crops that are still edible. The Fringe Enga use sweet potatoes and potatoes in this way. Do agriculturalists, in general, have a greater knowledge and use of famine foods than hunter-gatherers, the “Scudder Hypothesis”? Speaking of the Tonga, Scudder (1971:37) suggests that “when crops fail . . . the population, in order to survive, must seek out the widest possible range of wild produces available. And even that, prior to the development of governmental famine aid measures in the present century, was not sufficient to keep some people from starving.” The point was also made by Colson (1979:22): “There is some evidence that subsistence agriculturalists who expect recurrent hunger years have a greater knowledge of local plants than do hunter-gatherers and more elaborate technology for making them palatable, including techniques for extracting toxic substances.” This has best been discussed by research in southern Africa. The population density for the agricultural Gwembe Tonga of Zambia is 100 times higher than nearby foraging groups. Greater population densities over wider areas can also tether groups to their local setting to a greater degree by reducing the ability of people to migrate to other areas to seek relief, especially if possible refugia are also densely occupied and their

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inhabitants are also facing provisioning problems. In short, village farmers can lose the flexibility in movement that many hunter-gatherers have. This continues until the option of out-migration, often to cities, becomes available. Both Scudder (1961) and Grivetti (1979) examined this question in some detail. Grivetti compared the number of edible plants used by four San foraging groups with seven “agropastoralist” groups in southern Africa (see table 8). Among the San groups, the !Kung San are reported to have the largest number of edible plants at 85. Of the seven agropastoralist communities, four had more plants listed (145-plus, 139, 126, and 98) than the !Kung San, and the other three had somewhat fewer (84, 46, and 50). While these plants are not famine foods specifically, it does suggest a wider range of possible backup foods for village agriculturalists. A southern Ethiopian example is consistent with the conclusion that farmers have larger numbers of famine foods, and perhaps more knowledge of famine foods than hunter-gatherers (Guinand and Lemessa 2001). Under the auspices of the United Nations Emergency Unit for Ethiopia, a list of 125 famine foods with 154 plant parts used was compiled, which is in line with the number of famine foods used by village agriculturalists presented above. Famine foods are divided into four categories that are unique to this study (table 13). The first category is composed of wild plants consumed during food shortages, but these plants can also be eaten during times of normal food availability. Category 2 includes wild plants normally eaten but for which other parts are eaten during food shortages. Category 3 plants are commonly eaten but are eaten by people who would not normally consume them in normal ways. Category 4 includes crops that are eaten in atypical ways. As table 13 documents, categories 1 and 3 are the most common. What is unexpected is the small number of plants in the other two categories, both of which involve using parts not normally consumed. Crop parts not normally eaten, such as corncobs ground into an ersatz flour, are quite common famine foods. This is particularly true for urban populations, as discussed in the next chapter. These famine foods are further divided into plant parts used. As is consistent with many other data (chapter 2), fruits and leaves are the majority of famine foods enumerated with stem/shoots and seeds. It would be useful to examine other comparisons of hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists in order to evaluate if the number of edible plants among

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Ta b l e   13 Famine Foods by Plant Part for Ethiopia Category Plant Part Fruits Leaves Roots/Tubers Stems/Shoots Flowers Bark Othere Totals

1

2

3c

4d

8 10 31 13 1 3 4 45.5%

2 1 2 1 — — — 3.9%

55 1 5 2 1 — 1 42.2%

4 4 3 2 — — — 8.4%

a

b

Total 69 16 41 18 2 3 5 154

44.8% 10.4% 26.6% 11.7% 1.3% 2.0% 3.2% 100.0%

Source: Guinand and Lemessa 2001. a Category 1. Typical “Famine-Foods” Plants. These are plants that “can be collected when the need is greatest,” both during hunger seasons and more severe food shortages. Some of these may also be foods normally consumed. b Category 2. “Wild Food” Plants with “Famine-Food” Components. “Multipurpose” food plants where there are parts eaten in addition to more commonly consumed parts. c Category 3. “Wild Food Plants Attracting Additional Consumer Categories.” Plants normally consumed by some members of the population that are used by additional members of a community during food shortages. d Category 4. “On-Farm Food Crops” with “Famine-Food” Components. Crop plant parts not normally eaten as it would kill the plant. This category is mostly perennial cultigens. e Mostly gums and resins.

hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists consistently shows that agriculturalists have at least as much knowledge of local food plants or maybe even more than hunter-gatherers. Table 14 summarizes the famine foods listed for groups discussed in this chapter, the previous chapter, and the following chapter. It does seem that village agriculturalists have a more substantial corpus of knowledge of famine foods than hunter-gatherers in general. Irvine’s compilation for all of Australia lists 39, whereas the inventory for much smaller Papua New Guinea is 60 or more. The Ethiopian database contains 125 plants. The best-documented specific comparisons are from southern Africa and tend to support this conclusion. The San have between 19 and 39 plant foods that most likely would be famine foods; the Gwembe Tonga have

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Table 14. Comparison of Famine Food Use by Hunter-Gatherers and Village Agriculturalists Hunter-Gatherers San (Southern Africa)

19 (rare food plants)a 39 (supplementary plant foods) 39 (entire continent)b 13 (central deserts)c 17 (minor plant foods)d 44 (type 1)e 40+ (type 2) 6+ (type 3)

Australia

Northwestern North America

Village Agriculturalists Nigeria China Ethiopia U.S. Southwest Hopi (U.S. Southwest) Papua New Guinea Gwembe Tonga (Southern Africa) India Lee 1979. Irvine 1957. c Latz 1995. d Cane 1987. e Turner and Davis 1993. f Mortimore 1989. g Read 1946. h Guinand and Lemessa 2001. a

b

92 (entire country)f 475 (entire country)g 163 (southern part of country)h 19 (entire region)i 18j 60+k 32l 368 (entire country)m 116 (dry regions)n Minnis 1991; includes far northwestern Mexico. j Whiting 1939. k Bourke 1988. l Scudder 1971. m Watt 1889. n Gupta and Kanoda 1968. i

32. While these crude comparisons support the idea that village agriculturalists tend to have a wider inventory of potential backup foods than huntergatherers, these data should be used cautiously because of different definitions of food use by various scholars and the different sizes and diversity of the respondent communities. What one can say with some confidence is that village agriculturalists as a general rule do not have less knowledge of edible resources in their locale than hunter-gatherers. That is, even if the addition of

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farming does not increase the knowledge and use of native plants, it certainly is not subtractive at least until the development of urbanism. A more telling test of this suggestion would be to examine whether foragers with high population density matching agriculturalists also have a more extensive knowledge of local edible plants than their neighboring lowerdensity foragers. This comparison would help identify whether the important factor is population density or farming itself. Groups in northwestern North America would be a logical place to examine this question. In this region are some of the densest populations of hunter-gatherers along with more typical forager densities. Regardless of the relative knowledge of edible plants and famine foods among hunter-gatherers compared with small-scale farmers, it is clear that village agricultural and tribal communities hold an enormous amount of information about the edible landscape. Ethnobotanists have long known that Traditional Ecological Knowledge, including use of food plants in general and famine foods in particular, is both deep and widespread.

Five

Examples Urbanized Nations During Peace and War

In the bazaar of Kermanshah sat the traders, sad-eyed but imperturbable behind their stalls, on which were displayed dates, bread, and food grain. A few yards away lay some poor Lazarus, flies swarming about his head, filling his nose and mouth; from his mouth oozed a black liquid—yet he was not dead. —Arnold T. Wilson (1932:52) Myriads of flies were feasting on each individual bundle, and the eyelids, mouths, nostrils and ears were all besieged with battalions of flies gorging themselves on the helpless victims of the India famine. —Eyewitness account cited in Davis (2001:420)

T

he presence of urbanized nations has dramatically changed the relationships between people’s subsistence needs, food shortages, and the use of famine foods. These factors include demographic concentrations in cities; industrial organization of food production, distribution, and consumption; and often large-scale conflict. Pronounced inequality in wealth and power becomes a particularly salient characteristic of nations. All these characteristics ultimately lead to a disconnect between humans and their native vegetation that had helped sustain their ancestors for millennia. The inventory of famine foods consequently changes dramatically. While the scale of shortages increases greatly, so does their lethality. A hallmark of nations is urbanism, a process that has accelerated to the point that the majority of people today live in cities. Many megacities, such as Mumbai, Mexico City, Lagos, and Shanghai, among many more, now have

Examples | 111

Figure 9 Political cartoon from Puck magazine (1892) commenting on food inequality in imperial Russia.

more people than small to medium-sized countries. As a consequence, urban dwellers tend to be removed from local environments, and urban floras usually are quite depauperate in terms of foods available during shortages in contrast to rural locales. Transportation to outlying areas can be difficult during shortages. In addition, urban dwellers are often ignorant of native foods, their production, distribution, and even preparation. The seats of government are in cities, and there are many examples of rural hinterlands being pillaged for food to feed urban populations or at least given less preference for relief than cities. As an example, Wemheuer (2014:55) notes that “Mao was more concerned about a potential urban famine than about a real rural one” during what was most likely the largest national famine in history. Consequently, we expect a substantial reduction in the use of wild food plants, although some weedy or wild foods are available to urbanites. The urban poor in Mexico continue to widely use a few wild or semi-cultivated plants, such as prickly pear pads/stems (nopal) and fruits (tuna; Opuntia spp.), a fungus on maize (huitlacoche; Ustilago maydis), and a variety of greens (quelites), that are sold in city markets, but the consumers usually do not collect them themselves (Allen 1992).

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Nations rely on market economies of various forms. Especially with large populations, social mechanisms important for dealing with famines can weaken. Traders, merchants, and clients need not know each other well in market economies. Strong social bonds, including social banking with the expectation of reciprocal obligations that are essential for sustaining groups during famines, can fade. Nations are often multiethnic, an additional factor in satisfying the needs and desires of ethnic groups having different cuisines. The Soviet Red Army in World War II included soldiers from a variety of ethnic groups with different culinary traditions and religious food constraints, which on occasion caused some logistic and morale problems (Schechter 2015). On the positive side, this culinary mixing also introduces people to new foods that potentially could expand their traditional cuisine. Another hallmark of nations is the use of food as a policy tool by governments, both at war and during peacetime. As mentioned previously, many of the worst famines of the twentieth century were intensified if not caused by ill-conceived agricultural collectivization and agricultural policies, such as in the various republics in the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China (e.g., Applebaum 2017; Conquest 1986; Dikötter 2010; Li 2007). Similarly, famines in India and Ireland are examples of how colonial administrations and government response policies affected markets and were often less than effective. The size and severity of famines in nations can have extreme consequences. A few examples should suffice to make this point. The Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s caused the emigration of a significant percent of the population, resulting in changes to agriculture and demography, and these changes were not easily or quickly ameliorated. The Kazakh famine of 1930–1935 killed 1.5– 2.3 million people, around a quarter of the population, which reduced the ethnic Kazakhs to a minority in Soviet Kazakhstan, with a large number of Kazakhs emigrating to neighboring countries (e.g., Cameron 2018; Kindler 2018). The famine also killed a vast number of livestock for this traditionally nomadic people, resulting in dramatic changes in Kazakh lifestyle. The longterm consequences were profound. Ethnic Kazakhs did not become a majority in their own country until the 1990s, and pastoralism never returned as the dominant lifestyle. This famine occurred soon after another major

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famine in 1919–1922 that also devastated the Kazak Soviet Republic, suggesting that authorities did not learn from earlier experience . . . or they did. More has been written on famines in nations than any other type of human society for a number of reasons. First, essentially, all humans now are integrated into nations, so modern food shortages involve decisions and actions beyond local settings. Second, modern famines can have enormous loss of life and social disruption. Examples were cited in chapter 1. Third, information is increasingly integrated so severe food shortages can easily be seen in real time throughout the world. Because of media exposure, it is far harder for governments to hide or to minimize the consequences of food shortages. Consequently, there is a large body of literature on the severest famines, especially those in India, China, other parts of Asia, and Africa. Because of the enormous amount of scholarly work on famines today, the examples used here are only dealt with in the most abbreviated manner. Frustratingly, however, little of this research deals with famine food use. Here we consider a number of case studies. The first three briefly discuss national and peacetime famines. The classic and most widely studied famine, An Gorta Mór, or the Irish Potato Famine, occurred in Ireland in the 1840s. It is important if for no other reason than it is the iconic national famine, because it is with little question the best known famine. There also seems to have been an informal but real relationship between the British experience with the Irish Potato Famine and the responses by British colonial bureaucracy to famines in India (Gray 2006). The second and third cases are India and China. Both are enormous neighboring countries with a long history of food shortages, their responses, and governmental involvement in famine aid. The last set of four case studies (Netherlands, Greece, Siege of Leningrad, and Allied publications for the Pacific Theater) recognizes that food can be a tool of aggression and a consequence of conflict. Word War II offers a recent and complex picture of the use of famine foods. Food policy was an aspect of all belligerents’ war agendas during World War II, not limited to Germany, Japan, the United States, the Soviet Union, or Britain (Collingham 2012). First, we consider the Netherland’s Hunger Winter of 1944, an example with several unique characteristics. Next is occupied Greece in the mid-1940s. Famine food use in the Soviet Union during the brutal Siege of Leningrad

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during World War II (“Great Patriotic War”) is the penultimate example. Finally, we consider one aspect of the Allied forces in the Pacific Theater.

Famine Foods During Peacetime Ireland The Irish famine of the 1840s was not the first in Irish history (Clarkson and Crawford 2001; Kinealy 1994), and the potato blight was not limited to Ireland but rather spread its damage to continental Europe (Solar 1997). Despite this, the Irish Potato Famine is the one famine most remembered, most studied, and most infamous in the world. Dozens of books and an uncounted number of articles have described and analyzed the “Great Hunger,” “Irish Hunger,” “Potato Famine,” “Great Famine,” or An Gorta Mór. These references tend to focus on either describing the historical events or emphasizing how British policies, economic structures, land-tenure rules, class divisions, demography, religion, and the actions of large landholders caused and exacerbated the effects of the potato blight resulting in massive suffering, death, and emigration of a multitude of Irish. The potato had a special role in nineteenth-century Ireland as the staple that allowed many Irish peasants to feed their families on increasingly inadequate acreage (Mac Con Iomaire and Óg Gallagher 2009). It has been estimated that just prior to the famine, over 800,000 hectares (1,976,000 acres) were devoted to potato cultivation, of which nearly 47% were used for human food, with 33% used as animal feed, 13% saved as seed, 2% exported, and 5% lost (Bourke 1959). Since it is one of the most widely studied famines, there is some information about famine foods. Agricultural commodities were major foods during the famine. Edible potatoes or parts of potatoes that had not yet rotted were consumed. A scientific commission was established by the British government to assess the severity of the famine and make recommendations about how to protect unaffected crops and how to help reduce the blight’s effects. One of its recommendations was that inedible potatoes be processed to remove the starch, which could then be mixed with flour to make bread. The commission distributed 70,000 pamphlets with this suggestion, although the

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F i g u re 1 0 Sketch of the devastated Irish village of Killard from the Illustrated London News (1850) (enhanced image courtesy of http://www.viewsoffamine.wordpress .com).

authors were “doubtful that their suggestions would be followed” (Kinealy 1994:35). Other root crops, particularly turnips and rutabagas, were substituted for the potato when possible. Limited amounts of cereal crops, such as barley and oats, were distributed, but these were insufficient given the need. One of the major famine foods was imported Indian corn (maize) obtained by the government from the United States (Woodham-Smith 1962). However, there were problems with maize as a relief food. Irish consumers were unfamiliar with maize. In addition, there was insufficient industrial milling capacity for maize, which is a hard grain ill-suited to the soft-grain milling technology in Ireland at the time. It was then suggested that individuals and families mill their own grain, which proved unworkable. Finally, the government recommended eating unground corn, either lightly cracked or boiled. This too proved problematic; crushed maize irritated the gastrointestinal tract of vulnerable consumers, and the suggested boiling time was insufficient, resulting in severe gastrointestinal pains (Woodham-Smith 1962). As an American visitor to Ireland from Vermont during the famine and who

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had familiarity with maize commented, “The rice and Indian meal, both of which are excellent articles of food, were cooked in such a manner that, in most cases, they were actually unhealthy, and in all cases unpalatable” (Nicholson 1851:30). People also were reported to have eaten seed stock of potatoes and grain, a common act of desperation during many famines. In addition to these aid efforts were other appallingly naïve and silly ones. The Duke of Norfolk suggested that Irish peasants should eat curry power mixed in water with the mistaken belief that this mixture fed the poor in India (Woodham-Smith 1962). The most substantial lists of Irish famine foods used that I have encountered are based on a collection of oral histories (McHugh 1994; Póirtéir 1995). Table 15 lists the plants enumerated in Póirtéir (1995) that came from statements from survivors. Plants have been mentioned in other references, although the original sources of these citations are not specified, except for McHugh (1994). These famine foods are cornweed (charlock?; Crawford 1997; Kennedy et al. 1999; Lysaght 1986; Mokyr and Ó Gráda 2002), nettles (Curtis and Whelan 2019; Kennedy et al. 1999; Lysaght 1986); wrack (dried seaweed; Kennedy et al. 1999; Percival 1995), cabbage (Curtis and Whelan 2019; Kennedy et al. 1999; Lysaght 1986); turnips (Curtis and Whelan 2019; Kennedy et al. 1999; Lysaght 1986); rutabagas (Kennedy et al. 1999; Lysaght 1986); grass (Arnold 1988; Kinealy 1997; Morash 1997), “turf ” (Morash 1996), green cress (McHugh 1994; Morash 1996), roots (McHugh 1994; Morash 1996), beech tree (McHugh 1994), carrageen seaweed (sometimes referred to as “carrageen moss”; Lysaght 1986; Mokyr and Ó Gráda 2002; Percival 1995), bark (Arnold 1988; McHugh 1994), borage (McHugh 1994), wild vegetables (McHugh 1994), “green foods” (Osborne 1850), blackberries (Lysaght 1986), and unripe grain (Arnold 1988). Lysaght (1986) points out that seaweed was used even by inland groups during the famine. Only one reference lists chickweed (Stellaria media), but it is not clear where the author obtained this information (Somers 2005). However, chickweed was likely a famine food, because it was available in Ireland and has been recorded as a famine food in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Many of the enumerated famine foods were used as supplementary foods before An Gorta Mór (Downey and Stuijts 2013; Lucas 1960). Not all of these foods were equally important. Based on the number of references and discussion in these volumes, turnips, charlock,

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Ta b l e   15 Irish Famine Foods Listed in Póirtéir (1995)a Common Name Acorns Berries Blackberries Bog berries Cabbage Crabapples Crabtree Dandelion Dock Dúlamán Fraughan Haws Heather bloom Herbs Holly-berry Laurel berry Mangle (Beet) Mushrooms Nettle Pignut Red clover Seaweed Silverweed Sorrel Swede (Rutabaga) Sycamore Turnip Watercress Weeds Wild carrot a

Scientific Name Quercus spp. Various Rubus spp. Vaccinium spp. Brassica oleracea var. capitate Malus sp. probably Malus sp. Taraxacum officinale Rumex spp. Pelvetia canaliculate Vaccinium myrtillus Crataegus spp. probably either Erica sp. or Calluna sp. Various Ilex aquifolium probably Laurus nobilis Beta vulgaris Various Urtica dioica Conopodium majus Trifolium pratense Various Potentilla anserina Rumex acetosa Brassica napobrassica Acer pseudoplatanus Brassica rapa subsp. rapa Nasturtium officinale Various Daucus sp.

The most comprehensive list of famine foods used during the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and from direct oral history statements.

seaweed, and nettles seem to have been most important and widely used beyond relief grains (e.g., Lucas 1959). As substantial as it is, the inventory of identified famine foods used by Irish peasants during the famine seems small in contrast with the substantial number of possible edible wild plants in Ireland. A recent compilation of wild

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edible plants of Ireland includes a wide variety of 162 types with edible roots, greens, stems/stalks, fruits, and seeds (Curtis and Whelan 2019). It is likely that many of these plants were consumed under extreme conditions. The seeming difference between the potential edible plants and what are recorded to have been consumed suggests three possible explanations. First, the actual number of famine foods used was, in fact, small compared with what could have been consumed. Second, reports of native plants eaten during the famine captured only a small part of the alternative foods eaten, and third, there were contextual reasons why more famine foods were not used. I suspect that the second and third reasons may have been at play. Underreporting of famine food use is not unique to this famine; in fact, it seems to be the rule, rather than the exception. Also, there may have been conditions that limited greater access to potential famine foods by the poor. Landlords of large estates may have prohibited starving tenant farmers and strangers from foraging for edible plants on their land. Additionally, locations and abundance of wild edible plants may have been substantially reduced due to much of the rural landscape having been converted to fields and pasturage. The Irish Potato Famine is the most widely studied and reported famine— ever—and our knowledge of its famine food use beyond crops and relief supplies, such as maize, is quite good. However, one can wonder how much information about the use of famine foods is missing. What seems to be clear is that there were no systematic efforts by governments or other institutions to collect traditional knowledge of famine foods and disseminate it. Folk knowledge was the major, if not the only, source of knowledge and does not seem to have been valued by those governing during the famine or its chroniclers.

India Estimates of the frequency of severe famine in India prior to the British Raj include once every 50 years (Bhatia 1967) and once every 40 years (Dando 1980), although it is difficult to actually determine the number of Indian famines (Murton 1984). Indian rulers going back centuries have been involved in famine mitigation. Srivastava (1968:28) succinctly summarized precolonial actions by

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F i gu r e 11 Indian States discussed in the text.

authorities when faced with severe food shortages: “The chief methods of famine relief adopted by Indian rulers included free distribution of raw grain, opening of free kitchens, opening of public grain stores to the people, remission of revenue, payment of advances, remission of other taxes, construction of public works, canals and embankments, sinking of wells, encouragement of migration, and increasing the pay of soldiers.” A major change regarding famines occurred during the British occupation of India. British colonial economic policies contributed to the severity of many Indian famines (Bhatia 1967). As mentioned previously, after an especially severe famine in the late nineteenth century, the British colonial administration established the Indian Famine Commission, which developed a series of Famine Codes defining indicators of food shortages, the level of their severity, and how governments should respond (Brennan 1984; Gray 2006). These guidelines were modified over time and were in effect to some degree until the 1970s. Famine commissions were not the only governmental responses to food shortages. Various federal and state-level governmental organizations and projects were established to tackle food shortages in a variety of ways. These include some devoted to alternative food use, including examples

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from around the time of India’s independence: All India Women’s Council for Supplementary Foods, Foodgrains Policy Committee, All India Institute for Food Technology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, and the “Grow More Food” movement, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and the Annapoorna chain of restaurants that features substitute foods (Siegel 2018). A number of these efforts met cultural resistance to the use of unfamiliar foods and political opposition that argued for agrarian reform rather than use of alternative foodstuffs. Why this is the case is not clear, because these are not mutually exclusive strategies. In fact, they complement each other. India has had some excellent studies of various aspects of famines. Given the fact that India now accounts for almost 18% of the world’s population and the fact that there is tremendous cultural diversity in India, including over 600 tribal groups, one would expect that there have been an large number of plants used during food shortages. Like elsewhere and regrettably, the majority of research on famine in India focuses on the political economy of famines and various forms of aid efforts, especially distributing foods, providing wage labor, offering agricultural loans, and selling subsidized food grains. However, there have been botanists who cataloged Indian famine foods. One early example is Watt’s (1889) 10-volume Dictionary of the Economic Plants of India, which includes a list of 280 famine food plants used and is a good place to begin, because it remains the most substantial list of Indian famine foods. As large as it is, Watt pointed out that famine foods used around Mumbai (formerly Bombay) are disproportionately represented in his list, and he also suggested that future enquiries may well double the number of plant famine foods. Table 16 summarizes Watt’s data on 368 plant parts used; this number includes plants with multiple parts eaten. Since the publication of Watt’s compendium, a number of Indian academics have cataloged additional famine foods. In comparing Watt’s list with the four other worldwide cases (table 4), an obvious difference emerges. The three most common plant parts used in the other four cases presented in table 4 are fruits, leaves, and seeds, which account for greater percentages of famine foods (74%, 86%, 67%, and 80%) than those categories in Watt’s list (51%). Similarly, roots and tubers in Watt’s list account for a higher percentage (17%) than for the table 4 examples (10%,

Figure 12 Sample page from Watt’s (1889) Dictionary of the Economic Plants of India.

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Ta b l e   16 Three Lists of Famine Foods Used in India Part Leaves Roots/Tubers Seeds Fruits Whole Plantsd Shoots/Stalks Flowers Bark Other/Unspecified

All India (%)a

Rajasthan (%)b

Dry Regions of India (%)c

19.0 17.1 16.3 15.2 11.4 10.9 3.8 1.6 4.9

— 3.2 51.6 22.6 — — 3.2 6.5 12.9

31.0 7.8 24.1 25.0 — 4.3 3.5 1.7 2.6

Watt 1889; 368 parts from 280 plants. Bhandari 1974; 32 parts from 24 plants. c Gupta and Kanoda 1968; 116 parts from 86 plants. d Listed as “herb” in Watt’s compendium. a

b

11%, 6%, and 7%). As useful as Watt’s list is, and it is, the fact that the two other cases, including the one from “dry regions” of India, are different from Watt’s list seems to indicate that Watt’s list is skewed. Perhaps unexpectedly, the percentages for famine food plant part assemblages between the two largest datasets (Watt and Gupta and Kanoda) appear at first to be quite different. However, a Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient is statistically similar (rs = 0.787, p = 0.0119), indicating there is more similarity than it appears on the surface. The data for the “dry regions of India” and Rajasthan would be expected to be similar since Rajasthan is a large and arid state. They are not. Leaves are nearly one-third of the famine foods for the “dry parts of India” and absent from the Rajasthan list. As well, seeds are twice as common for the Rajasthan list as the other. I suspect that the great differences with the smaller database are most likely due to limited information; after all, the Rajasthan database is about one-quarter the size of the dry regions of India dataset. An additional list of famine foods is from an initial effort to study these foods in Rajasthan (Singhi and Joshi 2010). They list 12 famine foods: bhurat (Cenchrus biflorus) seeds, khejri (Prosopis cineraria) bark and seed pods, phog (Calligonum polygonoides) buds and flowers, kanti (puncturevine; Tribulus terrestris) seeds, banwalico (Acacia nilotica) seeds, ker (Capparis decidua)

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F i g u re 1 3 Fields in Rajasthan (photograph courtesy of Paul Fish).

berries, bordi (Ziziphus nummularia) fruits, tumba (Citrullus colocynthis) seeds, matira (watermelon; Citrullus lanatus) seeds, kachari (Salvadora oleoides) fruits, and sevan (Lasiurus hirsutus) seeds. While this list includes a range of plant parts, seeds and fruits clearly dominate, and curiously leaves are absent. There are some general data for famine food use during the Bihar famine of 1966–1967 (Berg 1971; Ramalingaswami et al. 1971). These include the use of roots/tubers, grass, tree leaves, and the increased consumption of mahua flowers (Madhuca longifolia). Another short, generalized list of famine foods includes yam (Dioscorea spp.) roots, bamboo shoots, wild mango fruits and stone, wild millet seeds, wild rice seeds, velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) seeds, and the pith of the fishtail palm (Caryota spp.) (Rajyalakshmi 1991). Well over 100 years ago, Watt (1889:313) recognized the importance of disseminating information about famine foods that “might be safely recommended to be eaten, in times of scarcity or famine” (emphasis mine). Despite Watt’s admonition, I can find no references showing where pre-British governments, British colonial administrators, or post-British independence

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governments used the substantial corpus of local knowledge of famine foods to help feed populations. Use of local foods used during shortages are unlikely to have prevented complete starvation and death in places with very dense human populations and where there were large urban centers, but it also likely would have helped since the reliance only on aid had not been completely successful. One can only speculate how less devastating Indian famines would have been with active dissemination of information about local famine foods. The Bengal famine of 1943, which affected what are now the state of West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh, would have been an instructive example of famine food use in India, because it was relatively recent and well documented. The background for understanding this event involved a complex set of natural and human factors. A series of crop failures occurred in 1938 during World War II, when Japanese forces were moving west from Burma (now Myanmar), leading to a justified concern by colonial authorities that a Japanese invasion of eastern India was likely and imminent. This fear led to a variety of actions that exacerbated the famine, such as “cessation of normal imports from Burma; dislocation of trade and movements of food grains because of controls and nearness of Bengal to the theatre of War in the East; the buildup of provincial and even district barriers against the movement of grain and other essential supplies; refugees from Burma; and the rise of prices resulting in decrease in marketable surpluses” (Bhatia 1967:321). What famine foods were used? Unfortunately and despite the extensive academic analyses of other aspects of this well-known and recent famine, there does not seem to have been much, if any, research on plant famine foods. There are several short and imprecise lists of famine foods. A contemporary Life magazine article mentioned cattle fodder, leaves, water hyacinths, banana skins, and melon rinds (Lohman and Thompson 2012). A survey of Bengal’s poor villagers mentioned roots, fruits, tree leaves, the stems and tubers of taro (Colocasia antiquorum), and aquatic plants such as shapla (Nymphaea lotus) (Das 1949). Once rural victims migrated to Calcutta (now Kolkata), some food aid was available, but like Indian corn in Ireland, was not always the healthiest food. Bajra (pearl millet; Pennisetum typhoideum, P. glaucum), a common grain food in other parts of India, was often available in soup kitchens but was not well digested by starved Bengalis. Rotten rice,

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not deemed fit for animal fodder, was also used in soup kitchens (Mukherjee 2015). The British colonial government proposed to import wheat from Australia and barley from Iraq, both cereals not part of the normal Bengal rations. Rural refugees continued to forage in the urban setting, looking for rotten fruit and vegetable peelings. Begging was a critical strategy; phan, water leftover from cooking rice normally thrown out or fed to livestock, was often offered to beggars. The apparent lack of interest in famine foods is striking given the hundreds of pages written about the changing price of commodities, especially of rice, during the famine, admittedly a topic of great importance. The Bengal famine of 1943 would have been (perhaps still would be?) an opportunity to conduct oral interviews with survivors and their immediate descendants to document what famine foods were consumed, when, and how, much like the oral histories for the Dutch Hunger Winter (Vorstenbosch et al. 2017), the Greek famine of World War II (Hionidou 2006, 2011), and the Chinese Great Leap Forward famine (Zhou 2013), which are considered shortly. In addition, two other major famines in East Asia occurred at the same time as the Bengal famine (Bose 1990), and the folk knowledge about the famine foods eaten during these contemporary famines could be valuable. It may not be too late to obtain information about at least a fraction of the famine foods used during the Bengal famine and contemporary food shortages. The difference in effects of the food shortage between urban and rural populations in Bengal is striking. An estimated 1.5–3.5 million people died during the Bengal famine, and most of these deaths were people living in rural areas who migrated to Calcutta. As Bhatia notes, “It is remarkable that, though a large number of people died of starvation on the pavements of Calcutta, not a single person among the dead belonged to Greater Calcutta” (1967:324). The tragic irony is that rural people of Bengal most likely had greater access to locally available famine foods than city dwellers, yet they perished in larger numbers. The urban-rural difference in death rates for the 1943 Bengal famine is not universal. For example, during the 1967 famine in the Palamau district in the Jharkhand state next to West Bengal, those living in the forest utilized local foods, resulting in “the relative immunity of the forest communities

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from famines”; locals suggested that forest resources could sustain people for as many as 100 days (Singh 1975:236). Yet, Singh further indicates that “wild fruits and roots” accounted for only 4% of the diet during the 1967 famine, partially because the multiyear drought affected the availability of these foods and also due to the increased presence of relief supplies, most commonly milo (Sorghum bicolor) and wheat. One factor in the differences between urban and rural death rates is that Calcutta dwellers in 1943 had ration cards and certain urban groups received provisions, but rural peasants did not (Sen 1981). Later in 1943, urban food stockpiles were shipped to hinterland communities (Greenough 1980). This still does not explain why rural communities seem not to have utilized local famine foods more during the 1943 Bengal famine. Why there also seems to have been nearly no study of alternative foods in the rural areas during the Bengal famine when there has been a long history of academic interest in Indian famine foods is certainly puzzling. The reasons for the disparity between the rural and urban suffering during these two Indian famines would be useful to explore in greater detail. However, it appears that greater availability of relief supplies in 1967 may account for much of the difference in rural death rates between the two famines. The unfortunate irony is that the wealth of traditional knowledge about famine foods in India, as exemplified by Watt and later scholars, seems not to have been used by those responsible for relief. This is not unique to India; in fact, it seems to have been the rule worldwide with rare exceptions. Despite the substantial amount of research on famine food use in India, there is so much more that can be done. With its still large and diverse rural and tribal populations, some of whom have experienced food shortages within living memory, there is likely much still to learn about Indian famine foods.

China Like India, China has experienced famines for millennia, which is why Mallory (1926) titled his influential monograph China: Land of Famines, or consider Anderson’s (1988:6) description: “China is a land of disasters.” Needham and Gwei-Djen (1986) attribute this to the irregularities of life-giving monsoon rains critical for cereal production. For a country so large, now

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F i g u re 1 4 Chinese provinces discussed in the text.

with 19% of the world’s population and over 50 ethnic groups, famines were common but were not evenly distributed either by geography or chronology. Therefore, the role of foods used during Chinese shortages is complex. At the broadest level, some scholars posit that famines were critical in the development of Chinese cuisine. Chang (1977:9) suggested that Chinese peasants were quite familiar with the local edible flora and believed “most do not ordinarily belong on the dinner table, but they may be easily adapted for consumption in the time of famine (chiu huang),” or as Anderson and Anderson (1977:363) state succinctly, “Food taboos are foreign to south China. Famines have long ago eliminated those.” A salient factor in the history of Chinese famines is the presence of bureaucratic states and scholars during a string of dynasties (Downs 2010; Li 1982; Needham and Gwei-Djen 1986). As Walker noted, “Famines have occurred in the west, but never was there written outside of China a book telling what to eat in times of famine, or a ‘famine herbal,’ such as that written by Chu Hsiao in the fifteenth century under the title ‘Chiu huang pȇn ts’ao’ [Jiuhuang Bencao]” (1944:354). In fact, Li (2007) contrasts medieval

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Europe with the Chinese imperial state. No one polity in Europe was as responsible for addressing famines as were the Chinese governments at all levels. These governmental institutions impacted food availability in many ways, some positive and some negative. They recorded information about severe food shortages. They also intervened in many ways to ameliorate famines, including encouraging change in agricultural practices. In response to the famine of AD 1027, the emperor ordered the introduction of a more drought-resistant and more productive rice variety from Vietnam (Freeman 1977). The governor of Fujian Province encouraged the cultivation of sweet potatoes in 1594 to help feed its population after severe food shortages (Spence 1977), and other plants were encouraged by the Chinese state. In addition, Chinese governments at all levels encouraged storage of foodstuffs as described in chapter 1, had tax abatement for severely affected locales, and undertook often massive public infrastructure projects to protect and extend agricultural lands (Anderson 1988). In fact, Anderson characterizes the Chinese government as having run “the biggest grain storage and relief operation in the world” (1988:104). On the other hand, state institutions can cause or exacerbate the effects of food shortages. As mentioned earlier, the recent and clearest example is the massive famine during the Great Leap Forward (e.g., Dikötter 2010; Hua 2012; Manning and Wemheuer 2012; Zhou 2012, 2013, 2014). Ill-conceived and too-rapid agricultural collectivization, rushed industrial development schemes, self-serving misinformation by local bureaucracies, and appropriation of foodstuffs from peasants led to what was most likely the most devastating single national famine in human history. The Ming Dynasty (AD 1368–1644) was the zenith of intellectual study of famine foods in China. Needham and Gwei-Djen discuss the history of what they call the “Esculentist Movement,” efforts during this dynasty to record edible foods, especially those useful during famines: “There can be no doubt that the esculentist movement constituted one of the great Chinese humanitarian contributions” (1986:330). Its most remarkable contribution, and in fact one of the most remarkable treatises on famine foods ever produced, is the Jiuhuang Bencao, a list of 414 famine foods first compiled in the 1400s. (Read [1946] provides an English translation.) This work is remarkable beyond its pioneering approach. It was not simply a passive compilation

F i g u r e 1 5 Preface from the 1593 edition of the Jiuhuang Bencao (Famine relief herbal) (courtesy of the Wellcome Collection).

F i g u r e 1 6 Illustration of lotus root from the 1593 edition of the Jiuhuang Bencao (Famine relief herbal) (courtesy of the Wellcome Collection).

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Figure 17 Sample page from the English translation of the Jiuhuang Bencao (Famine relief herbal) with lotus root entry (Read 1946).

of folk knowledge, but the author seems to have conducted experiments in his botanical garden. The Jiuhuang Bencao included woodcut illustrations so that readers could distinguish these useful plants from similar looking plants that were inedible or even poisonous. This work was followed by other early publications that deal at least indirectly with foods useful during food shortages in China. These include Ye Cai Pu (Yeh Tshai Phu; Treatise on edible wild plants, 1524), Ju Tshao Phien (Monograph on uncultivated vegetables, 1582), and Ye Cai Pu Lu (Yeh Tshai Po Lu; Comprehensive account of edible wild plants, 1622), among others

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(Needham and Gwei-Djen 1986). The Jiuhuang Bencao along with Ye Cai Pu were the two sources used in the section on famines in Xi Guangqi’s 12-part treatise on agriculture, Nongzheng Quanshu. Yu Ruwei, a governmental functionary during the Ming Dynasty, as a part of that government’s efforts to combat famine, published the Huangzheng Yaolan (Treatise on famine administration) in 1589 that focuses both on prevention of famines as well as their mitigation (Downs 2010). He identifies possible famine foods by Chinese folk classification, taste, and how poisonous they are. Yu Ruwei then describes the form and preparation techniques for 55 possible famine foods. Recipes are included to extend common foods by the addition of alternative ones. It also discusses concoctions that were said to make inedible food edible and lessen the need for food. One includes the following ingredients: honey, flour, sesame oil, tree root fungus, licorice root, and fresh and dried ginger root. In another, hibiscus leaves are recommended to make raw soybeans edible (Downs 2010). As a measure to prevent famine, Yu Ruwei suggests planting and using 10 plants more widely to increase food availability: jujube and/or date (zao; Ziziphus jujuba or Phoenix sp.), chestnut (li; Castanea mollissima?), ginkgo (yinxing; Ginkgo biloba), persimmon (shi), taro (yu), foxnut (qian; Euryale ferox), water caltrops (ji/lingjiao; Trapa natans), fungi (junxun), bracken fern (jue), and yams (shan yao). Following the Ming Dynasty and the last imperial dynasty, the Qing Dynasty (AD 1644–1912) also had famine mitigation strategies (Fuller 2015; Spence 1977; Will 1990; Will et al. 1991). These included an impressive system of state granaries and a revolution in Chinese agriculture with the introduction of Western crops. But famines continued during the Qing Dynasty and later (Wemheuer 2014). Post-Qing China saw radically changing international relations and relief, warlord politics, the Japanese invasion of China, the formation of the Republic of China, conflict between it and Communist Chinese forces, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China. All of these affected famine aid. In the broadest perspective, Fuller (2015, 2019) argues that the evolution of the modern Chinese state weakened traditional strategies such as rural mutual aid obligations. Although not studied in any detail, one suspects that while these upheavals may not have greatly changed folk knowledge of famine foods, they likely affected the degree to which these foods helped sustain the populous in the face of changing relief efforts

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by the government and private native and international charity agencies as well as population increase. More recently, likely the most lethal famine in world history, the Great Leap Forward famine of 1958–1962 also saw governmental involvement. There were early and later phases of the Daishipin Movement (or Food Substitution Campaign) at this time (Hua 2012). During the first, the national government denied the scale of the food shortages, and grain continued to be exported. The central government did initiate a “Food Augmentation Methods Campaign” during the first phase that had the goal of extending grain supplies. Strategies included suggesting different ways of cooking rice to extend it. One way was to make a paste from cooked rice and then add yeast to produce “Great Leap buns.” Atypical grains, such as maize, were added to other grains to extend flour for noodles. The second phase of governmental famine mitigation began in the spring of 1960 when it became clear to the central government that food shortages in the countryside were catastrophic. The government began a “Food Substitution Campaign.” This program encouraged people to eat what they would not normally consume, such as “green water” (green algae; Chlorella sp.) and other algae (Scenedesmus sp. and Tetraselmis sp.) and the roots of a bulrush (Schoenoplectus mucronatus). In addition, there were efforts to develop new foods such as artificial starch from agricultural waste, a meat substitute made from mold grown on various plant residues, double-cooked rice to expand its volume (but not its nutritional value), grain chaff added to flour, leaf protein derived from a variety of species, and acorn flour (Yang 2012). A reported quarter-million people in one part of Hubei Province “were sent into the hills to gather wild fruits,” although what they gathered, how successful the gathering trips were, and what types of information the local government provided to the gatherers is not stated (Hua 2012:186). What seems to be the case is that the range of the large number of potential famine foods developed and recorded over centuries by peasants and scholars were not encouraged to the degree that they should have been, a problem we have seen with most governments. Also like India, another large country with a long intellectual tradition combined with a history of famines, there seem to be some recent systematic surveys of famine food use in China that combine botanical identifications

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with information about use. There is also information on famine food use in China in unsystematic descriptions and narratives of famines. What are important famine foods used in China? The logical place to start is the Jiuhuang Bencao. The following plant parts in this reference are ordered by their frequent use: leaves (63%), fruits (and presumably including seeds; 24%), roots (11%), shoots and stems (1%), bark (0.4%), and flowers (0.4%). The importance of leaves is clear. Historical narratives provide some information about what famine foods were eaten, but too often the categories are far too broad. Li (2007:300–301) in her historical summary of famine in northern China enumerates a short list of major famine plant foods: corncobs, chaff, grass, weeds, bark, cotton, sawdust, soybean flour, sweet potato stalks, cottonseed cakes, and leaves of grasses and other plants. Famine foods recorded to have been used during the latter part of the nineteenth century include leaves, roots, tree bark, grain husk, grass seeds, corn cob paste, wild herbs, and the leaves from sorghum stems used for roofing (Edgerton-Tarpley 2008). When needed, Chinese peasants ate cultivated plant food normally fed to livestock such as xikang (bran dust), a milled byproduct of polishing rice (Will 1990). Yang’s (2008) major monograph on the Great Leap Forward famine mentions various foods eaten. These included many derived from crops: alfalfa stalks, peanut sprouts, cotton batting, rice straw, maize stalks, millet and buckwheat hulls, cotton seeds, sorghum stalks, potato vines, and raw sweet potatoes. Others were from native plants: tree bark, elm bark, wild herbs, grass, mushrooms, bracken ferns, qiabuqi (Kummerowia stipulacea and/or Lespedeza virginica?) roots, wild castor oil plants, and cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica) roots. One peasant strategy was “eating green” (chi qing); that is, eating green grains and other crops before the mature harvest could be expropriated by the government (Thaxton 2008; Wemheuer 2014:47). This caused much consternation among authorities since it reduced yields. A very valuable approach for understanding famine food use is a collection of remembrances of the 1958–1962 famine by those who lived it. Zhou (2013) interviewed many survivors, especially rural residents. Memories fade and change after 40 years, yet the narratives are compelling. Nearly 40 personal recollections recorded by Zhou mention include some information

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about plant famine foods eaten. While the specificity of the plant identifications, particularly of wild plants, is not as detailed as we might wish, nonetheless there are patterns. Most of the references are to crops eaten in nonstandard ways or parts of crops not normally eaten. These include sweet potato leaves and stalks; wheat and rice chaff; corncobs; raw legumes such as soybeans (Glycine max), broad beans (Vicia faba), and peas; straw; potato stalks; sugarcane fiber; whole chiles (Capsicum sp.); rotten sweet potatoes; radish stems; banana stalks; castor beans; ramie leaves (Boehmeria nivea); mustard leaves; and hemp (Cannabis sativa subsp. sativa) for noodles. Native plants eaten during the famine mostly were listed simply as “wild plants” or “wild herbs.” Other non-crop plants mentioned are a fungus, wood dust, elm (Ulmus sp.) and pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum) leaves, wild celery, juanizi berries, grass and grass roots, water celery, and wild cotton roots. Consumption of bark is cited a large number of times. One interviewee remembered the substantial consumption of bark: “When I got off the lorry, I was stunned by what we saw. . . . All of the trees were white. What really was going on? It turns out that the trees had been stripped of their bark—the bark had all been eaten by the villagers. In that village the people had nothing to eat but tree bark” (Zhou 2013:128). In another study, interviewees in two villages in the mountains of Anhui Province remembered famine foods including the roots of gegen (Pueraria lobata), juecai (Pteridium aquilinum), huabeimaoqi (Polygonatum spp.), and shuiluobo (Sinacalia tangutica); the bulbs of shuibaihe (Lilium giganteum) and other species of Lilium; and the leaves of shenxiandoufu (Abelia engleriana) (Kang et al. 2013). Few of these underground parts are eaten today. The interviewees stated that during food shortages they just ate the wild plants that they normally consumed but did so in greater quantities. The majority of wild plants they eat are leaves, so these seem to have been the major famine foods as is the case for China as a whole. Other sources mention Chinese famine foods. Will (1990) lists a variety of wild famine foods: grass roots (caogen, same as cogongrass?), inner bark (shupi), wild legumes (yecai), grass seeds (caoshi), and duckweed (shiuping). Becker (1997:206–208) enumerates plant famine foods used during the 1958–1962 famine, including tree bark, corncobs, soybeans, chaff from sorghum, wheat and other grains, mushrooms, roots, freshwater plankton,

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sawdust, weeds, straw from roofs, flowers, cotton from mattresses, and “anything that appeared to be edible.” Hua (2012) also identified famine foods used during the Great Leap Forward famine. These include a green algae (Chlorella sp.); bark; wild fruits; red duckweed (probably the genus Azolla rather than Lemna); stalks of grains such as wheat, maize, rice, and sorghum; roots and stems of potatoes, peas, and peanuts (Arachis hypogaea); fungi; goosegrass; acacia leaves; tree roots; almond (Prunus dulcis) flour; maize pith; wild melons; grass; loach straw; wild celery; wild pond rice; mushrooms; bean “segments”; sweet potato seedlings; kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) husks; acorns; plantain; sweet oak; flour augmented with atypical grains such as maize; artificial starch proceeded from various plant parts; and maize cob husks. Villages in Gansu Province were not only affected by the famine but also dislocation due to dam construction that flooded traditional lands. Plant famine foods used included chaff, elm bark, wild herbs, potato stems, and fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) seeds (Jing 1996). Villagers in Da Fo (on the border between Henan and Shandong Provinces) remember eating wild vegetables and the flowers of the scholar tree (huai shu) and willow (liushu) (Thaxton 2008). They also increased the use of the underground sweet potato tubers, which had the advantage of being less likely to be expropriated by officials. Zhou (2012) also published official Chinese documents about the famine. A few of these mention the use of additional famine foods: sorghum flowers, corn husks, peanut skins, and watermelon rinds. These additional taxa reinforce the conclusion that agricultural products were the most important famine foods used during the great famine of 1958–1962 and could indicate governmental disinterest in folk knowledge of famine foods. China has had a long history of food shortages, an equally long history of governmental famine mitigation efforts, and a robust corpus of local knowledge of edible foods. While Chinese governments were aware of and monitored food supplies and famines, it is unclear how much of the corpus of local knowledge of famine foods, first systemically collected as early as the Ming Dynasty, was used by governments to alleviate human hunger during the famine of 1958–1962 despite the Food Augmentation Methods Campaign and the Food Substitution Campaign. The 1960 governmental report from Fujian Province cited above ended with the recommendation

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that there should be more technical instruction on the ground to avoid any further incidents of food poisoning, suggesting much could have been done (Zhou 2012:51). Whether national, provincial, or local governments followed through on this advice is not known. Will (1990:35) expressed the need for greater dissemination of knowledge about what can be eaten during food shortages: “In fact, the need to make judicious and safe use of wild plants appears to have given rise to a veritable science of famine foods. It would be interesting to find out how widely this knowledge, which may have had deep roots in the past, was disseminated among the population at large.” Indeed. Two recent reissues of the Jiuhuang Bencao may signal a renewal of the Daishipin Movement and the use of the once abundant knowledge of famine foods, many of which may still be available (Yan 2016; Zhu 2008).

Famine Foods During War Governments recognize that food is a tool of war and conflict. This can be seen in American World War I poster slogans: “Food Will Win the War,” “Every Garden a Munitions Plant,” and “Food Is Ammunition.” We will focus on World War II because food was also an important factor during this widespread conflict and postwar history with increasing academic attention on the subject, especially in western Europe but not limited to this region (e.g., Blom 2019; Collingham 2012; Fisher and Fisher 2010; Hionidou 2006, 2011; Kratoska 1998; Richardson 2015; Tönsmeyer et al. 2018; Vorstenbosch et al. 2017; Wheatcroft and Ó Gráda 2017). It has been estimated that at least 20,000,000 people died of starvation and associated diseases during World War II, about the same number of combatants killed (Ellis 1990). They died not just as an unintended consequence of conflict and disruption of food supplies, but also as a consequence of government actions to encourage the death of large groups. Furthermore, economic and food insecurity were central factors in the reasons for World War II (e.g., Collingham 2012; Tooze 2006). As a consequence of the perceived need for Lebensraum and racist Nazi ideology, as the best known example, German policies aimed to deliberately starve Jews, Slavs, prisoners of war, Roma, and people in occupied territories, among others. Plans to

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starve the people on occupied lands in the east to feed Germany and its armies were based on guidelines outlined by a meeting of senior Nazi officials, led by Herbert Backe; Der Hungerplan (The Hunger Plan) explicated an expected 30 million deaths as a result of the German army provisioning itself and the German homeland on eastern European and Russian bounty. While never fully implemented, the action of German occupation in the Eastern Front nonetheless was responsible for millions of people starving (Kay 2006). As Hermann Goering so succinctly summarized the Nazi food policy for eastern Europe in a letter to occupation administrators, “Let them perish as long as no Germans starve” (Mazower 1993:9). The use of food as a tool of war was not limited to National Socialist Germany, although they were the masters of the art of starving people during World War II. All major countries involved in World War II had food policies that affected populations, their colonies, and their enemies. The previously mentioned Bengal famine of 1943 is a clear example. Of the largest participating countries, the United States is unique in having enjoyed an abundance of food during wartime, although some foods were rationed (Collingham 2012).

The Netherlands Food shortages were common throughout Europe during and at the end of World War II (e.g., Collingham 2012; Tönsmeyer et al. 2018). The Dutch Hongerwinter (Hunger Winter) of 1944–1945 killed up to 25,000 people and perhaps more when deaths due to disease and other health issues are included (van de Zee 1998; Vorstenbosch et al. 2017). The Dutch example is especially interesting, because it occurred in a relatively affluent country, with high literacy and significant urbanism, and was of limited duration. It also demonstrates the effects of government and military decisions on civilian food supplies. The general Dutch population—but not Dutch Jews, Roma, or Sinti— survived most of World War II reasonably well, especially compared with their many Slavic neighbors to the east. Nonetheless, the winter of 1944 was brutal, both in terms of particularly frigid weather and of severe food shortages. In anticipation of liberation from German occupation, Dutch railroad

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workers heeded the call of the Dutch government-in-exile to strike in order to inhibit the movement of German forces and matériel as well as other goods. In response, the German occupation authorities prohibited the movement of food supplies to the urbanized western Netherlands. That and the destruction of critical transportation infrastructure, such as docks, as well as confiscation of transportation stock, such as barges and trucks, combined with the direct theft of food by the occupying forces, made access to food more difficult even after the German embargo was lifted. As a result, food stock was severely limited in the German-occupied western Netherlands, and especially so in the cities. Thus, the famine of the winter of 1944–1945 began. There was food in the Netherlands; it just was not in the population centers. Government and military actions affected food availability in sometimes unusual ways. This topic is not directly relevant to the focus of this book, but suffice it to say that at first the German authorities resisted food distribution to the Dutch population, but then both the Germans and Allies agreed to allow airdrops of food if the Allies did not bomb German installations. Operation Manna, run by British Commonwealth forces, and Operation Chowhound, the American airlift program, dropped tons of foods. These relief supplies were not sufficient in and of themselves to sustain the population but surely helped many to survive the last weeks of World War II in Europe. After the liberation in May 1945, ground transport of food was delivered to the civilian population (Maas 1970; van de Zee 1998; Warmbrunn 1963). The Hongerwinter is an example of a national government taking major proactive steps to prevent even greater suffering. Children were moved out of cities to rural areas in anticipation of food shortages and conflict. The Dutch national government also issued cookbooks and pamphlets to the general population that described possible famine foods, probably the best modern example of a central government providing intervention by disseminating famine food information, though there is some question of how effective this information was for the general population. In addition, the Dutch government took common actions that other governments instituted, such as rationing food and establishing community soup kitchens. Individuals and families also found ways to obtain food. Hundreds of thousands left cities on “hunger trips” to rural areas, sometimes for weeks at a time (van de Zee 1998). It has been estimated that over half of the urban

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households in the Netherlands participated in these food trips to the countryside (de Zwarte 2018). None of the general histories of 1944–1945 I consulted mention foraging for wild products as a major activity during the hunger trips, so it appears that these were not treks to forage naturally available food resources but rather mostly or solely to barter goods for food with farmers. This should not be too surprising as urbanites most likely did not know the vegetation of these outlying areas well, and hunger trips occurred during the winter, so the availability of wild foods would have been limited. Various publications do mention famine foods. Vorstenbosch and colleagues (2017:Table 1) compiled a list of famine foods from published accounts, diaries, and letters. This is one of the most comprehensive lists, if not the most comprehensive list, of famine foods used during World War II, and table 17 is a shortened version of it. A total of 59 plant taxa (species or a few subspecies) are listed. Of these, 25 are cultivated plants with many eaten in atypical ways, 39 are either wild plants or cultivated plants found escaped from cultivation (in which case, they are included in both categories), and one is not specified. Leaves are most common (33%), followed by roots/tubers/bulbs (26%), seeds/ nuts (13%), fruits (11%), other (11%), flowers (4%), and stems/shoots (2%). This documents a wide range of famine food plants, and some foods were more important than others. Based on various references it seems that chief among these were sugar beets (Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris) and tulip bulbs (Tulipa spp.). Tulip bulbs were only one of six ornamentals bulbs consumed, the others being gladiolus (Gladiolus sp.), dahlia (Dahlia spp.), crocus (Crocus spp.), iris (Iris spp.), and hyacinth (Hyacinthus orientalis) (Vorstenbosch et al. 2017). One commercial bulb grower stated that he alone “sold 2,500 tons of bulbs—crocuses for coffee, daffodils and hyacinths for fodder, and tulips for the humans” (van de Zee 1998:150). With the export of ornamental bulbs likely reduced in a war zone, the tulip and other bulbs would have been reasonably abundant. Also mentioned in these general lists of famine foods but said to have been less important are beetroot (varieties of Beta vulgaris), potato peel, nettle (Urtica dioica), chickweed, and sorrel (Rumex sp.). Clearly, cultivated plants, either those not normally eaten as human food or those used in novel ways, were important foods eaten during this severe shortage. One of the most unique studies of famine foods is a follow-up investigation of survivors’ memories 71 years after the Hongerwinter. I know of no

Ta b l e   17 Plants Used During the Dutch Hunger Winter, 1944 Common English Name Apple Birch Blackberry Blackcurrant Black elder Black radish Broadleaf cattail Broadleaf plantain Butterbur Carrot Cauliflower Chanterelle Cherry Chickweed Chicory Cleavers Clover Common cornsalad Common daisy Common glasswort Common hyacinth Common sea lavender Cowberry Cranberry Crocus Dahlia Dandelion Dead-nettle English oak English plantain English walnut European beech European blueberry Field mushroom Gladiolus Golden orache Gooseberry Ground elder Ground ivy

Scientific Name Malus domestica Betula spp. Rubus spp. Ribes nigrum Sambucus nigra Raphanus sativus subsp. niger Typha latifolia Plantago major Petasites hybridus Daucus carota subsp. sativus Brassica oleracea convar. botrytis var. botrytis Cantharellus cibarius Prunus avium Stellaria media Cichorium intybus var. sativum Gallium aparine Trifolium latifolia Valerianella locusta Bellis perennis Salicornia europaea Hyacinthus orientalis Limonium vulgare Vaccinium vitis-idaea Vaccinium oxycoccus Crocus spp. Dahlia spp. Taraxacum officinale Lamium sp. Quercus robur Plantago lanceolata Juglans regina Fagus sylvatica Vaccinium myrtillus Agaricus campestris Gladiolus spp. Atriplex hortensis Ribes uva-crispa Aegopodium podagraria Glechoma hederacea (continued )

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Ta b l e   17 (continued) Common English Name Hazelnut Hawthorn Horse chestnut Iris Japanese crabapple Jerusalem artichoke Linden Nettle Porcini Purslane Radish Redcurrant Rose Sorrel Sugar beet Sweet chestnut Sweet-scented woodruff Tulip Wild apple Woodland strawberry

Scientific Name Corylus avellana Crataegus sp. Aesculus hippocastanum Iris spp. Malus floribunda Helianthus tuberosus Tilia spp. Urtica dioica Boletus edulis Portulaca oleracea Raphanus sativus Ribes rubrum Rosa spp. Rumex acetosa; R. crispus Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. altissima Castanea sativa Gallium odoratum Tulipa spp. Malus baccata Fragaria veca

Source: Adapted from Vorstenbosch and colleagues (2017:Table 1). This list does not include typical commercial foodstuffs but does include common foods eaten in atypical ways. The original table has more information, and the reader is advised to consult it because this research is the best example of recording famine foods from historical and oral history narratives.

other study structured as systematically to examine the memory of a famine and the foods used during these terrible times (Vorstenbosch et al. 2017). The research team interviewed 78 survivors, including 52 from urban areas and 26 from rural locations. Despite the intervening seven decades, the interviewees remembered 38 plant foods with 43 parts used that they ate during the famine. Of these, 14 (37%) were cultivated plants, 21 (56%) were wild plants, and 3 (8%) were fungi. The percentages of remembered cultivated and wild plants versus the general list of famine foods are almost exactly the same (cultivated, 37% vs. 39%; wild, 56% vs. 61%). The large number of tubers/roots and the low number of seeds stand out compared with many

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other lists of famine foods. Interviewees mentioned an average of 3.4 famine food plants with a range of 1 to 10. Rural people remember having used more wild plants than the urban cohort, as one would expect. Interestingly, they cited some plants not listed in Vorstenbosch and colleagues’ table 1 literature review, and over half of the plants listed in table 1 were not mentioned by the interviewees. While memories fade and the interviewee population was fairly small, it is nonetheless impressive how much information was retained seven decades after a severe but short famine. On the other hand, and given the number of plants in table 1 not mentioned by interviewees, it warns that much knowledge of famine foods may well have been lost from oral tradition. Many of the remembered plant parts consumed are listed in Vorstenbosch and colleagues’ table 2. The most common were leaves (33%) and roots/tubers/rhizomes (26%), followed by fruits (11%), seeds/nuts (13%), stems (2%), and other (mushrooms/whole plant/flowers [15%]). The authors of the study also consider which foods were most commonly referenced by the interviewees. The first three are sugar beet tubers (with 85% of the interviewees mentioning this plant), tulip bulbs (59%), and potato peels (45%). The next two highest—chicory root (29%) and nettle leaves (15%)—are far less commonly remembered, with many of the other famine foods only cited by a few interviewees. The significant number of underground parts remembered as having been used is unusually high compared with many areas of the world. Given the recognized commercial importance of tulips, other ornamental bulbs, and sugar beets, underground plant parts in the Netherlands were far more important than simple percentages would suggest. The large number of leaves is consistent with many other areas of the world as discussed in chapter 2. But what was unexpected in that general list of Hongerwinter famine foods was the rare mention of seeds. A warning from this study is the fact that only three of the 78 participants remembered learning about famine foods from government pamphlets and booklets. Instead, they learned what to collect from neighbors and common knowledge. Therefore, programs to educate people about what to eat during food shortages may not be as effective as one might hope, as local/ folk knowledge still was the primary vehicle for perpetuating knowledge of famine foods.

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The Dutch experience was not unique; other European countries also suffered hardship. While I will not deal in any detail with the use of famine foods in other northern European countries during the occupation, brief mention of Norway at the same time as the Dutch Hongerwinter shows the similarity of experiences during food shortages during German occupation. Norwegians adulterated and extended wheat bread by adding green pea flour, seaweed, chalk dust, potato flour, and fishmeal (Hjeltnes 2018). In addition, they used a variety of alternative foods: nettles, dandelions, sorrel, caraway shoots, beetroot leaves, sugarcane leaves, various wild berries (such as blueberries [Vaccinium sp.], blackcurrants [Ribes nigrum], gooseberries [Ribes sp.], and elderberries, [Sambucus nigra]), rose [Rosa spp.] hips, elderflowers [Sambucus nigra], blackberries [Rubus spp.], and cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus). The reference to sugarcane is problematic. It is doubtful that sugarcane (Saccharum sp.) could have been grown in Norway or was imported during the war. Perhaps what is being referred to is the use of sugar beets or a local grass, søtegras (sweetgrass, Glyceria spp.) (Gerd Jørgensen and Michael David Pirie, personal communication 2020). Ersatz tea was obtained by using the leaves of a number of plants: raspberry (Rubus occidentalis), blackcurrant, redcurrant (Ribes rubrum), lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), birch (Betula sp.), fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium), juniper (Juniperus sp.), meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), and linden (Tilia sp.), along with apple peels. Substitute coffee was produced from acorns (Quercus spp.), rye grains (Secale cereale), and various herbs. A book, Gratis mat av ville planter (Free food from wild plants), was published and widely used. In short, the Norwegian experience is in general much like that of the Dutch except for the apparent much greater use of berries in Norway and the unique role of ornamental bulbs as alternative foods in the Netherlands.

Greece Like the Netherlands, Norway, and other countries in Europe, Greece experienced a famine during German, Bulgarian, and Italian occupation that resulted in at least 20,000 deaths and perhaps many more (Mazower 1993). The food insecurity was exacerbated by the fact that Greece was already a

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net food importer before the war, and German forces plundered local food stocks during the war. The geographic distribution of severe food shortages and the political, economic, and cultural contexts of this famine were as complicated as most modern famines (Hionidou 2006). For example, the first famine in 1941–1942 affected Athens mostly due to governmental relief polices, whereas during the following 1943–1944 food shortage, rural areas experienced greater shortages than Athens, which received a disproportionate amount of food (Voglis 2006). There have been some studies of famine food usage during the Greek famine (Hionidou 2006, 2011; Matalas and Grivetti 2007). Based on an oral history project of Athens survivors in 1998, a number of famine foods were recollected (Matalas and Grivetti 2007). Chief among them was the use of maize as a substitute for wheat in bread. Others mentioned were dried beans, wild greens, nettles, broomcorn seeds (Sorghum scoparium), tree flowers, acorns, breadfruit fruits (Artocarpus altilis), and carob pods and seeds (Ceratonia siliqua). Plant adulterants in foods were soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) in desserts and sawdust as an additive to flour. And as particularly common among urban populations, many scavenged garbage. Hionidou (2011) also conducted an oral history project of survivors of the Greek famine. She found a similar list of plants were recollected as food eaten during the shortage: carob pods, radishes (wild?), various unspecified greens, wild daisies, black mustard (Brassica nigra?), nettles, thistle (Cirsium sp.), and acorns. Cultivated plants, many of which were used normally as animal food, were consumed by humans: the seeds of bitter vetch (Lathyrus linifolius), dari (Sorghum sp.), broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), cotton (Gossypium sp.), and lupine (Lupinus sp.). In a general history of the occupation, a few famine foods were mentioned, specifically grass, weeds, wild plants, and olive (Olea europaea) stones (Mazower 1993). Some were growing in Athens, whereas others were present in outlying locations. Much as in other examples discussed above, the inventory of plant foods documented as famine foods used in Greece seems limited. Again, it is hard to believe that those documented as having been used are anything but a sample of those that could be eaten in times of shortages, especially compared with the diversity of wild edible plants that would have been available. For example, a recent study of wild edible plants used in a number of

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field locations in three Mediterranean countries documented 147 plants for Greece (compared with 84 for Italy and 173 for Spain) from a number of plant families (Leonti et al. 2006), so the number of recorded famine foods again seems limited given the large number of potential famine foods that would have been available in Greece.

Siege of Leningrad Russia was no stranger to famines either in the distant past or the more recent Soviet Union era (e.g., Dando 1977; Robbins 1975; Wemheuer 2014; Wheatcroft 2017). Dando (1976) estimates that for the millennium between AD 971–1970, Russia experienced 126 famine years and 100 less severe hunger years, or one every five years. The most recent and reasonably well-recorded period of food shortages and responses of interest here is the World War II era. The Soviet Union withstood and finally triumphed over the German invasion but not without horrendous cost in lives, infrastructure, and materiel; the Soviet Union lost a greater number of its population during World War II than any other country (although China may have sustained more civilian death; the data are not clear). Food availability was no small part of the war effort. Not only did the German invasion destroy and disrupt infrastructure, it also captured some of the productive farmland, especially in the Ukraine. In addition, the German government’s goal was to starve the Slavic population east of Germany (Collingham 2012; Filtzer and Goldman 2015; Kay 2006). The inadequate food situation affected the Soviet Union as a whole, as evidenced by widespread food rationing through the country, but shortages were especially severe during the infamous sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad, which are well remembered for brutality and food deprivations. While we focus on Leningrad, no doubt similar use of famine foods occurred during the Siege of Stalingrad, which also suffered extreme food shortages (e.g., Hellbeck 2005), as well as in other parts of the Soviet Union occupied by Germans and their allies (e.g., Collingham 2012; Goldman and Filtzer 2015). As would be expected from a political and economic system devoted to centralized planning, food production, distribution, and consumption were regulated by the government. This had unintended consequences. For

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example, much of Stalingrad’s food was stored in centralized facilities controlled by the government. Unfortunately, the German air force bombed and destroyed the major food warehouse in Leningrad on September 8, 1941, and also sank barges carrying food (some of this food was later salvaged by divers, however). Several survivors describe how the destruction of the Badaev food repository was considered the beginning of the terrible siege famine (e.g., Kirschenbaum 2006; Reid 2011). Individuals and families supplemented food from a widespread and bureaucratic rationing system, including organized food distribution, with gardening and foraging (Goldman and Filtzer 2015). Most discussion of substitute foods consumed during these stressful times involves animal products such as pets, urban vermin, glue made from animal hooves, artist’s fish glue, and casein, as well as various consumer goods such as toothpaste and cold creams. The observation that “industrial workers were on the lookout for lubrication oils and greases, oilcakes, glue, leather drive belts, anything edible” (Belozerov 2005:216) illustrates the desperation and suffering. Plant famine foods were also eaten during the siege. In addition to strategies to increase agricultural production, groups, families, and individuals were encouraged to tend gardens. Some crops became especially important. As Filtzer and Goldman note, “The most important of all food products as a supplement to the ration, however, was the humble potato. The potato became the ‘signature food’ of the war” (2015:18). In addition to relying more on certain crops, commonly used foods were prepared in different ways. Cooks were encouraged to use boiled potato and beet stock, which might have been disposed of in more affluent times, and classes were offered to teach people how to prepare unfamiliar foods (Filtzer and Goldman 2015). Bread was extended by adding unusual ingredients such as malt, sawdust, and flour from corn, soy oats, rye, and barley (Goure 1962). Other famine foods included zhnykh and duranda, cakes of linseed oil, cottonseed, hemp, and sunflower hulls, which were normally fed to livestock (Reid 2011). Other cottonseed oil cakes originally intended as fuel for ships were diverted as human food (Goure 1962). An indirect example of a plant famine food was earth dug from the ruins of the Badaev warehouse, which was supposed to contain some edible burned residues of sugar left after it was bombed (Reid 2011).

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There were organized efforts to use substitute foods of plant origin. For example, “On November 13 [1941] the bread formula was changed. Henceforth it was to contain 25 percent edible cellulose. By the end of 1941, over 6,000 tons of malt, 4,500 tons of oil cakes, and nearly 500 tons of cellulose from wood and cotton had been added to bread” (Bidlack et al. 2012). Three hundred people were mobilized to collect “edible” pine and fir bark. Each region of the city was ordered to produce two to two-and-a-half tons of “edible sawdust per day” (Salisbury 1969:389). The Wood Products Institute developed a protocol for deriving cellulose from pine sawdust. A treatment for cottonseed cakes to make them more edible for humans was developed. The “Workshop of Artificial Albumen,” a group of scientists and engineers, developed a system for the industrial-scale production of yeast, a common ingredient in community soup kitchens. As reported by Inber, after cooking yeast in large vats for three hours, “a light brown plastic mass appears. . . . It is albumin yeast, a kilogram of which replaces three kilograms of meat” (1971:187). There also seems to have been some organized foraging in parts of the Soviet Union. Goldman notes that “unions organized workers in large groups to gather edible wild greens, such as sorrel, nettles, and dandelions, with high nutritional value” (2015:74), but it is not clear if these efforts occurred during the Siege of Leningrad even though the residents of Leningrad are reported to have collected dandelions and nettle greens (Reid 2011). To combat vitamin C deficiency, pine needles were processed. A total of 738,500 liters of pine needle extract were manufactured during the first half of 1942 alone (Glantz 2002). Survivor diaries provide insights into uses of food during the siege. They emphasize the central role of bread in subsistence. Skrjabina (1971) mentions oilcakes, adulterated bread, and yeast soup as alternative foods. She further discusses how she bartered household goods and clothes with country families for food until even rural peasants were so concerned about their provisions that they stopped bartering. Kochina (1990) describes the joy of finding wallpaper glue made from pasta residue that could be made into soup. She also “learned how to make doughnuts out of mustard, soup out of yeast, hamburgers out of horseradish, and gelatin out of joiner’s glue” (Kochina 1990:46). Like Skrjabina, her family bartered goods for food, and early on dug potatoes from suburban gardens.

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Inber’s (1971) diary provides more details about famine food use. She mentions pine needle extract and a decoction of oak bark for medicine. During a visit to the Leningrad Botanical Institute she learned that rare tulip bulbs were taken, presumably for food. She describes an institute exhibit dedicated to wild plants: “We came upon this list of dishes in a brochure issued at the time: ‘Zrazy with Burdock,’ ‘Roulet with Goose Foot,’ ‘Ragout from Kupyr,’ and ‘Caviar from Dandelions’—it would provide a smile if it weren’t so tragic” (Inber 1971:200). She then continues, “When starving people are hurling themselves at every root, at every leaf, it was most important for them to recognize poisonous plants.” She also provides insights into how the Botanical Institute contributed to food supplies during the siege. During a celebration of the Botanical Institute’s anniversary, she reports that administrators described how during the siege the institute worked on vegetable gardens, studied pine needle chemistry, and encouraged the use of wild plants as food, although the specific plants and actions are not outlined. Before returning to Moscow at the end of the siege, Inber attended an exhibit called “The Defense of Leningrad.” The Public Nutrition Section listed the following foods: “Root flour, sweepings (that is, all the remains swept from everywhere) were used for scones. Albumen yeast—for first dishes, Dextrine (technical waste)—for fritters, baked puddings, rissole cutlets. Four from linseed cakes—for second dishes. Cellulose—for fritters, baked puddings, rissole cutlets” (Inber 1971:206). The Botanical Institute also gave many lectures on edible plants (Bidlack et al. 2012). Given how few references there are for the use of such plants in the documentary record, the efficacy of these lectures is an open question. A collection of survivors’ writing and memories mention an unexpectedly few alternative foods (Simmons and Perlina 2005). These include duranda pancakes made from sunflower seed hulls, pancakes made from coffee grounds, and nettles and grass. Another dimension of famine food use, expectedly, was the prevalence of theft of food. This includes theft of potatoes from fields, stealing anything edible from industrial buildings, stealing ration cards, and the expropriation of foodstuffs by managers and workers in warehouse and food preparation facilities (Belozerov 2005). In villages and rural areas around Leningrad, German occupiers raided homes for food and other valuables in addition

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to demanding food payments for identification cards mandated by German occupation authorities (Hellbeck 2005). It is worth recognizing the justifiably famous and heroic example during the Siege of Leningrad of a potential famine food not eaten. The Bureau of Applied Botany contained what was arguably the world’s largest economic botany collection of seeds, roots, and fruits with 300,000 lots representing 25,000 species (Nabhan 2009). These were collected by the great and martyred Nikolai Vavilov and colleagues in order to improve Soviet agriculture. During the siege, this unique type of seed stock would have been edible. However, the staff, with much personal sacrifice, refused to eat the specimens and protected them from human and rodent predation, despite the death of nine staff members from starvation. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Botanical Institute and others, use of nonagricultural food plants during the Siege of Leningrad is not widely reported, suggesting that it played a minor role in provisioning even though there is one brief and unspecific mention of 100 types of grasses and herbs eaten (Bidlack et al. 2012). The overwhelmingly important food based on diaries and documentary records of survivors was bread. There were a number of likely factors for the few wild plants reported to have been used. They may, in fact, have been relatively unimportant, especially during the Soviet Union’s frigid winter climate when few native plants would have been available. Also, because foraging was a largely individual or family activity, perhaps it did not gain the notice of authorities and was not recorded in official documents used by historians. No doubt many potential foraging areas were off limits because they were held by German forces and their allies or were areas of active conflict. Perhaps most importantly, the amount of food needed to try to sustain a major city under siege is staggering. It is unlikely that there were sufficient local famine foods to be major food sources for the Leningrad population.

Allied Publications for the Pacific Theater The final example is four survival manuals prepared by the Allied forces about foods for those combatants stranded in remote and unfamiliar locations in the Pacific Theater during World War II. These manuals are different

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from many of the previous examples since they were fully anticipatory rather than reactive efforts. One is a small booklet, Food Is Where You Find It: A Guide to Emergency Foods of the Western Pacific (Cranwell et al. 1943), published in New Zealand during World War II. It was prepared “in response to the demand for information about emergency foods of the Solomon Island combat area” because “Airmen and others who know none of the useful plants of an area will suffer unnecessarily” (Cranwell et al. 1943:2–3). This booklet lists 64 potentially useful food plants, along with plant use for other purposes such as for first aid, fiber, dyes, shelter, et cetera. The information presented must have been considered useful as the booklet went through four printings in 1943 and 1944. The second book, Emergency Food Plants and Poisonous Plants of the Islands of the Pacific, was published by the U.S. Department of War for the same reason as the New Zealand volume, to “aid the individual who become[s] separated from his unit” (Merrill 1943:1). The third and fourth booklets, Friendly Fruits and Vegetables and Survival Hints, were prepared by two Australian Allied organizations (Australian Land Headquarters 2013; Military Intelligence Services-X 2013). The plants in the two Australian lists are generally similar to each other, although the Australian Land Headquarters list has a greater percentage of fruits, fewer seeds/nuts, and fewer leaves/fronds. The 64 food plants listed in the New Zealand booklet; the 33 and 56 plant parts listed in the two Australian lists; and over 100 ferns, herbs, palms, grasses, tubers, greens, fruits, and seeds described in the U.S. manual were considered famine foods for downed Allied pilots and those stranded by torpedoed ships in the Pacific Theater as well as army units needing to live off the land. However, many of these foodstuffs, such as coconuts (Coco nucifera), durian fruit (Durio zibethinus), jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), and pandanus nuts (Pandanus spp.), would have been well-known to and widely used by the local communities of the region. In fact, the booklets advised the readers in need of using them to consult with local residents who would have knowledge of many of the enumerated foods. Thus, the plants listed in these four booklets were emergency (famine) foods for one group but not for local inhabitants. Each publication has at least a minimal description of the plant along with what is consumable and how to make it edible. Three of the manuals include black-and-white line drawings, and one

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F i g u r e 1 8 Sample page from Emergency Food Plants and Poisonous Plants of the Islands of the Pacific (Merrill 1943).

provides photographs. The USA manual’s illustrations are the clearest and most comprehensive. There are warnings about toxicity or irritation without appropriate preparation in all four publications. These manuals also include other information about edible animal foods, piscicides, plants as sources of water, poisonous plants to avoid, and other survival skills. Table 18 tabulates the plant parts listed in the four publications so we can compare the lists compiled by different people for botanically similar regions. Some categories may overlap; some depend on differing definitions by the authors. The category “whole plants” could be listed as “stems/shoots” and “leaves/fronds” in another manual. There may also be some overlap between the categories “seeds/nuts” and “fruits.” In general, the four lists are quite similar. Across the board fruits are the most common food listed. Roots/tubers are second in two lists, with leaves/fronds second in the other two. Other parts tend to be less common. What is missing is bark, which is a famine food in other areas. Why bark is missing for these tropical areas is

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Table 18 Comparison of Four Allied Survival Manuals for the Pacific Theater Australia Parta Leaves/Fronds Fruits Seeds/Nuts Stems/Shoots Flowers Roots/Tubers Whole Plants

Booklet 1 (%) (N = 33)b

Booklet 2 (%) (N = 56)c

New Zealand (%) (N = 43)d

United States (%) (N = 149)e

15.2 45.5 9.0 12.1 — 18.2 —

5.4 66.0 — 10.7 — 14.3 3.6

4.7 41.8 7.0 9.3 — 30.2 7.0

19.5 30.2 12.8 10.7 4.7 13.4 8.7

There can be more than one part for a single plant. Military Intelligence Service-X 2013. c Australian Land Headquarters 2013. d Cranwell et al. 1943. e Merrill 1943. a

b

not known. One would think that given the large number of trees in tropical areas, bark would be a famine food. It is true that inner bark likely would be more abundant and have better nutrition during the growing season in temperate areas, much as sugar maple collection in northeastern North America is a seasonal activity. Nonetheless, tropical trees grow and therefore many should have edible inner bark. The reason could well be that there are simply many other and better famine foods given the enormous biomass and biodiversity in the Pacific tropics. Like the other examples, I have not found any evidence regarding how useful these manuals were. However, there must be at least a perception that these types of survival manuals are useful since the U.S. military and other organizations still produce them.

Nations and Famine Foods It would be reasonable to suggest that local famine foods have become far less important, with modern food shortages in nations due to high population densities, greater urbanism, alteration of the landscape with decreases

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in the distribution and abundance of possible edible plants, the reduction in the knowledge about and use of traditional famine foods, and especially the increased distribution of relief supplies. Still, in light of the fact that at least 59 famine foods were documented for the Netherlands during the Hongerwinter of 1944, a small country during a limited, although severe, food shortage, points toward the conclusion that even in largely urbanized countries, there was and still may be an important corpus of famine food knowledge, much of which has not been recognized. Memories of people who lived through severe food shortages explain how famine foods contributed to their survival and are a way to acquire information about famine foods. The examples from China, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Greece document at least a useful residuum of knowledge of local edible plants available during food shortages among rural peasant communities. And I suspect that there was more use of wild plant foods than it seems in the case of the Siege of Leningrad. It is unclear how long this knowledge will be available in the face of migration from rural to urban centers and increased pressure to shift economies to greater involvement with global and national markets. Famine food use during war is not simply “old” history. The use of 25 types of mushrooms and 17 lichen taxa as alternative foods helped sustained people during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s (Redzic et al. 2010). More recent conflicts are affecting food provisioning for large numbers of civilians, such as in Sudan and Yemen, resulting in mass starvation. The potential value of famine foods continues, so the need for famine foods likely will also continue for the foreseeable future. Two interrelated ways to gather, maintain, and use the accumulated knowledge of famine foods include (1) increased documentation of famine foods and (2) programs by governments and other organizations to spread this knowledge to groups likely to face life- and health-threatening shortages. The Irish, Dutch, and Russian examples document institutions publicizing information about potential famine foods to the general population. It is not clear how effective these programs were; first and foremost they depend on accurate and detailed information. Still, such strategies are reasonably inexpensive, even though none seem to have been a priority. Except for a small cohort of mostly botanists in underdeveloped and developing countries,

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there does not seem to be an urgency at present to document famine foods. In general, governments are not distributing knowledge of available famine foods. It is clear that national and international aid efforts are and will be the major provider of relief food now and into the future. But local famine foods can help make a difference between living and dying, particularly when the flow of relief supplies is impeded.

Final Thoughts on Unloved Food Plants

Six

The famine has been a revelation, a trial, a shame; also an opportunity and an awakening. It has transformed some of the inertia of the past into energy. —B. C. Verghese on the Bihar famine of 1966–1967 (cited in Berg 1971:127)

F

ood shortages have always been a part of humanity, and there is no doubt that the use of famine foods has helped ameliorate the effects of shortages, both for less severe ones and the most terrible events. Massive famines have gained the most attention, but food shortages occur at different levels of severity, geographic extent, and duration. We can never know how many people survived food shortages because of the use of famine foods over the millennia, but the numbers must be minimally in the tens of millions, and likely included some of your ancestors.

Defining Foods Used During Food Shortages One problem in understanding famine food use is that different scholars use different criteria to define what might be considered a famine food. To some, the definition of a famine food should be restricted to foods that are eaten only during famines. Others consider famine foods more broadly, as those eaten during food shortages. I much prefer the latter, less restrictive definition, because it allows us to view the use of foods during all types of food shortages from hunger seasons through intermediate shortages to fullblown famines as well as to view decision-making about food choice where affected people have agency.

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One of the practical problems with differing definitions of famine food is comparing the use of such plants between groups and regions. Unless the author(s) of famine food studies made clear what they consider a famine food to be, it is difficult to assess whether differences in use are due to diverse definitions or differences in actual use. I suspect that is a reason behind some of the apparent and sometimes unexplained differences between the types of famine foods used as discussed in the previous chapters. Instead of trying to define famine foods precisely or simply assembling a list of plant foods into discreet categories, a better approach for understanding use of foods during shortages is to rank food preferences that adjust with changing conditions. I suggest this in the SW/NW example in chapter 5 (see also Minnis 1981, 1985, 1991), where ranking responses is based on social inclusivity. Others have proposed similar approaches to food selection and other responses to food shortages. Lee uses this approach (1979) in his study of !Kung San subsistence; Eidlitz (1969) frames food use during shortages in the circumpolar region in this way as well; Huss-Ashmore and Johnston (1997) also make this point more generally; Hionidou (2011) orders food choices in a similar manner regarding the Greek famine of the early 1940s; Watts (1988) also argues for serial sequence of responses to food shortages using the Hausa as a case study; Turner and Davis’s (1993) categories of famine foods recognize this point; and Corbett (1988) does the same by arranging household responses to African famines in three sequential stages with famine food use being in the first stage. Likely, there is a reshuffling of food use along a scale of preference with greater use of lower preference foods as more preferred foods become unavailable during natural events such as floods, drought, or fire, or humancaused factors, including conflict or resource overexploitation. Specific foods can have different roles in a culture’s cuisine depending on the circumstances, so the idea of rigid and discreet categories of foods is not especially useful. For example, what may be used as a minor seasonal staple or culinary supplement during normal times could be a lifesaving food during shortages. Similarly, commonly eaten crops, as we have seen, often are eaten in ways not normally consumed when rations are reduced. What is a higher or lower preference food is defined by the specific context with sometimes unexpected outcomes. During food shortages, some poorer Nepalese, who normally consume less expensive maize flour, had to

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buy higher-status and more expensive white rice because of the unavailability of maize flour (Panter-Brick 1996). In this case, lower preference is based on price and availability, not on cultural expectations, and is counterintuitive to what we would expect. While trying to rigidly define famine foods is not the most productive approach, what is important is to provide as much information as possible about what plant it is; its biological, ecological, and chemical characteristics; and how and when it is used and by whom. Broad categories, such as weeds or grass, provide little useful information. Conversely, providing a specific plant name is helpful but adding detailed information about the specific nature of the cultural context of its use is most valuable. Two examples already discussed, one from northwestern North America (Turner and Davis 1993; chapter 3) and one from southern Ethiopia (Guinand and Lemessa 2001; chapter 4), point toward more sophisticated, nuanced, and useful ways of understanding variation in famine food use. The general discussion in the first two chapters and the many short case studies in the following three chapters document how complicated understanding the use of plant foods is during food shortages. Local environmental and cultural settings are critical for understanding what foods will be eaten, by whom, and when. The structure of the local ecology will affect what resources might be available, and how these plants respond to factors affecting food abundance and availability. Population density of the affected groups and those of neighboring peoples can expand or limit the availability of alternative foods or refugia available during food shortages. Famine food use also depends on the nature of the society and its place in the world economy—for example, if it is tightly integrated into international markets or national governments, that alters the decision-making of those affected. We see this clearly in the regional examples. Not all San groups use their environments in exactly the same way, nor do their neighboring farmers, such as the Gwembe Tonga, use the same plants as the San groups. So, too, the examples of northwestern North America and the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico demonstrate regional variation in the use of plants during food shortages. In fact, groups may not even be aware that foods consumed by their neighbors and available to them in times of food stress are edible, as some examples from Africa document.

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An additional factor in understanding the complicated nature of famine food use is the large number of plant species recorded as having been eaten during times of food shortages. Freedman’s (2019) database shows that famine foods are spread throughout the plant kingdom with at least one famine food in each of 190 families; that is, there is now at least one famine food known in 42% of the 452 recognized plant families (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2017). This cultural and biological variation means that detailed and specific studies of famine food use are needed to expand databases of foods available that would be most useful in the future. But it also means that information about unfamiliar foodstuffs potentially adds to the available foods that other communities are unaware of. This is particularly true as the world becomes more interconnected and plants migrate outside their native ranges.

General Patterns of Famine Food Use Despite the contingent nature of famine food use, there are some overall patterns. First, the bean family (Fabaceae) has a far higher number of famine food species than any other plant family. Therefore, attempts to document additional potential famine foods might give special attention to this family. But as Freedman’s data document, famine foods are found throughout the plant kingdom, so focus on one family should not preclude study of others. Second, famine foods in each instance are not limited to a single plant part type. True, some types are far more important than others in individual cases, such as leaves in China and berries in the circumpolar region and northwestern North America, but in each case, people usually eat a range of famine foods. Third, famine foods tend to be fruits, seeds, leaves, and to a lesser degree tubers/roots. Other plant parts, such as flowers, pollen, resins and gums, nonvascular plant parts, and inner bark, are also famine foods but are used less frequently in most cases. But again, individual cases vary from this general pattern. Gums seem to be especially important famine foods for San groups and some Australian Aboriginal communities. The unusual importance of inner bark among circumpolar groups also comes immediately to mind.

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Famine food use is best understood in a historical frame. Famine food use was altered dramatically with two sea changes in the human condition: one is the development of farming, and the other is the formation of urbanized nations. There has been a question as to whether the adoption of agriculture as the dominant food-getting strategy led to the reduction in the number of food plants used compared with foraging groups. The Scudder Hypothesis suggests that agriculture is additive not just by the addition of crops, but because with denser populations, agricultural groups may need more backup food sources than most foragers. It is also additive by changes in land use, particularly field clearance, that increase some edible plants, especially weeds whose edible biomass may be greater than the native vegetation even though there may be less species diversity. The crude comparisons discussed in chapters 3 and 4 are supportive of the Scudder Hypothesis. Even if the knowledge and use of famine foods due to this transition was not additive, it certainly need not be subtractive, reducing the number of edible resources known and used by farming communities, until the second major transformation. The second sea change affecting famine food use in three major ways is the formation of urbanized nations. The first is greater involvement in market economies. The second is the greater availability of extra-regional relief supplies. And the third is the increase in dense urban settlements. I suspect that in comparison to the apparent increase in the inventory of food plants used by village subsistence-oriented farmers, intensive, market-driven economies do the opposite, they reduce the inventory of potential famine foods. The number of edible plants may not necessarily be diminished, but knowledge of them by local communities is. Several examples cited in chapter 1 illustrate the erosion of the knowledge of available famine foods. Information retained by grandparents is not being transferred fully to their grandchildren, especially in more urban and market-involved locations. This is hinted at by the fact that while 80% of highland Papua New Guineans used local famine foods during the drought/frost of 1996–1997 and 70% of lowland groups did, only about 50% of urban residents used local famine foods (Vile 2013). In short, we can suggest that the farther people are from centers of population, power, and transportation infrastructure, and the poorer they are, the greater the use of local famine foods.

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One of the most dramatic effects of the development of nations is what people in urban areas eat and how they prepare these foods. Reviewing the information in chapter 5 leads to the conclusion that cultivated plants in various forms play a disproportionate role as food eaten during shortages. People are familiar with crops, and infrastructure and markets best deliver what they are most familiar with. One unexpected example of this was the importance of breadfruit smuggled across the Mediterranean into Athens during World War II (Matalas and Grivetti 2007). The emphasis on crops as famine foods can be used to argue that there is a special need not only to record uncultivated plants but also to investigate how to maximize the food value of the entire crop plant, even of the parts not normally consumed.

Value of the Study of Famine Foods No matter how one defines and views famine food use, the question remains: Why study foods used to ameliorate the effects of food shortages? The answer to the question is more than the obvious one, that famine foods can save lives during food shortages not only by offering alternative and available foods but also by buying time until aid supplies arrive. This question has great urgency given how little interest scholars and those in charge of aid efforts have had in the use of local famine foods. Permit me to repeat one example from the preface that is emblematic of how ignored famine foods are. The special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a nearly 600-page, double-column report that focuses its food section on agriculture, as it should (Field et al. 2012). It then lists short-term strategies to improve food security: “diversifying livelihoods to spread risk, farming in different ecological niches, building social networks, productive safety nets and social protection schemes, and risk pooling at the regional or national level to reduce financial exposure,” with longer-term strategies being “land rehabilitation, terracing and reforestation, measures to enhance water catchment and irrigation technique, improvement of infrastructure quality to better access markets, and the introduction of drought-resistant crop varieties” (Field et al. 2012:368). All of these are necessary and critical strategies, but I would also add consideration of the use of native plants and alternative

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ways of preparing cultigens that have helped untold generations to survive extreme food conditions, that can complement relief supplies, and that may provide new sources of food. In regard specifically to climate change, we also need to know how environmental changes are likely to alter the distribution and abundance of possible famine foods. It would be a mistake, however, if these efforts were to be imposed top-down rather than in close collaboration with local communities, many of whom have deep and sophisticated knowledge of their local ecology and its dynamics. In the broadest sense, the ethnobotanical base of human provisioning has decreased dramatically. The tragic irony is that while nearly everyone in the world is dependent on farming and is becoming even more dependent on agriculture, the diversity of crops has decreased dramatically. It has been estimated that since 1900, three-fourths of the genetic diversity of agricultural crop species, varieties, and subspecies has been lost (FAO 2004). Out of the thousands of crops developed throughout the world over millennia, humanity is now dependent on not much more than a mere handful or two of plants. The most important crops worldwide are well-known and include maize, wheat, rice, potato, cassava, soybean, sweet potato, sorghum, yam, and plantain. In fact, just three—wheat, rice, and maize—account for 60% of the calories consumed by humans. The dangers of a narrowing agricultural base has been recognized for well over a century, with government agencies, nonprofits, and other institutions racing to collect and preserve threatened genotypes before they become extinct. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, better known unofficially as the Doomsday Seed Vault, is just the latest and well-known example of these labors to preserve crop diversity. Just as the genetic diversity of plants, especially crops, needs to be documented and curated by seed banks and in situ conservation farming, so too efforts toward what Nazarea (1998) terms “memory banking” are essential. She is specifically referring to knowledge of how to farm and use crops, but this concept applies equally to plant foods used during shortages, since I suspect that our knowledge of famine foods has also decreased dramatically. With increased urbanism, industrial agriculture, and migration of rural peoples to cities throughout the world, the long and detailed connections between local groups and their flora are being diminished significantly, if not being lost entirely in some areas. It is likely that the loss of knowledge of what foods

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to eat when provisions are reduced is being lost at an even faster pace than the loss of crop genetic diversity. Yet, there has not been much concern about the reduction of this important human intellectual patrimony that includes the plants used, where and when they are found, and how they are rendered edible. Would lives have been saved during the Chinese famine in 1958–1962 among others had information in the Jiuhuang Bencao been more systematically and aggressively made available to rural communities? A reduction in death by only 1% because of sharing the knowledge of famine foods would have saved nearly half a million lives during that one appalling episode. While it is true, as we have seen, that knowledge of famine foods was traditionally maintained by Chinese peasants and others, knowledge of what is edible during food shortages is not perfect in two critical ways. First, there are potential famine foods that communities do not recognize as consumable. A number of examples were cited in the previous chapters. Second, knowledge is not perfect, because there are numerous examples of individuals and sometimes large numbers of people being poisoned by eating toxic plants or eating foods not adequately prepared. A few of the many examples were mentioned in chapter 2. Thus, governments and private organizations have an important role in effectively disseminating the broadest information about what famine foods are available and how to make them edible without negative effects. While we have seen examples from the Netherlands, India, and China of governmental programs encouraging the use of alternative foods, it seems that most of these were based on agricultural products, and even when wild famine foods were promoted, they were a small fraction of what would have been available. An encouraging modern analogy to the Jiuhuang Bencao briefly discussed in chapter 2 is the compilation of 125 Ethiopian famine foods by the United Nations Emergency Unit for Ethiopia (Guinand and Lemessa 2001) as well as Freedman’s 1,600-plant database. These provide a model for encouraging the creation of databases for scholars and famine aid managers in other regions. Studying the use of famine foods has other specific values. It helps us understand human history. Perhaps the best known example in the West is the 1840s Irish Potato Famine, An Gorta Mór, that affected Ireland for decades as well as other parts of the world through migration of millions from the Emerald Isle, particularly to North America, Australia, and Britain.

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Had aid efforts been more successful, how much less migration would have occurred? Likely not as much as we would hope, because one of the longterm motivations in the migration was efforts by large landowners and governments to dispossess tenant farmers who they believed had become a liability in a changing Irish economy. Still, human suffering likely would have been reduced by greater use of famine foods, and Ireland is hardly the only example. Food use is a historically dynamic process. The effects of the Columbian exchange on the cuisines of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres were less discussed than the results of empire building in the New World and the consequences of diseases but have been no less life altering. For example, Ho (1959) argued that the introduction of crops derived originally from the Western Hemisphere, such as maize, potato, and peanut, were so critical to feeding the Chinese populous that their introduction constituted a second Chinese agricultural revolution. Entire books have been written in the effects of the Columbian exchange on cuisines and economies, so there is no need to discuss it in detail here other than to point out that these changes affected famine food use. Three examples should suffice to show how famine food use changed with the exchange of food sources across continents. The first is the use of introduced individual plants as famine foods. A prickly pear cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) was introduced from the Western Hemisphere and is widely recognized in Ethiopia as an important famine food (Guinand and Lemessa 2001), and two species of agave (Agave), again a Western Hemisphere genus, have been used as famine foods in India (Watt 1889). The second effect is the alteration of diet, not only by the addition of new foods but also how they change use of traditional foodstuffs. This was illustrated in the example of the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico; the introduction by Spanish colonizers of new foods and food production strategies reorganized food preference patterns, including the use of famine foods. It is worth noting that the foods, cuisines, and plant-husbandry practices introduced into the SW/NW were themselves a cultural fusion derived from Mesoamerican (Western Hemisphere) and European (Eastern Hemisphere) sources. The third is the obvious example of crop residues, byproducts, and other normally inedible crop parts available to farmers as famine foods. As we saw

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in chapters 2 and 5, these farming resources are major famine foods for agricultural groups that were not, obviously, available for the hundreds of generations before crop domestication when all human groups were foragers/hunter-gatherers. Maize was domesticated and developed in the Western Hemisphere. Its cobs, despite their limited nutritional value, are recorded as a common famine food in parts of the Eastern Hemisphere such as China, normally being ground into flour to extend more traditional flour sources such as wheat. History matters only if you learn from it. One would hope that previous experiences with famines would help reduce the number and severity of food shortages. That does not always occur. Regarding the North Korean famine of 1994–2000, Lee (2005:50), for example, noted that “in many socialist countries, the government failed to properly respond to famine. It initiated sudden institutional changes that generated agricultural stagnation, ignored famine reports from below, paid little attention to saving victims, and sometimes even exported food during the famine. The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] government faced similar blame during the food crisis.” Capitalist and colonial governments have not necessarily fared much better. The British made similar errors in dealing with the Irish Potato Famine and famines in India when they were the colonial power in charge. Understanding how food shortages affected history is only one value of such research. There are a number of practical uses of famine foods data. Famine foods have the potential to become more widely used sources of food when preferred foods fail. In short, many famine food plants seem to be quite productively resilient. Some factors stand in the way of their wider use. First, many are not well documented. Second, some are deleterious in the absence of processing. This may not be as much of an impediment to wider use as it would first appear, as food processing has a long and important history. Johns (1990) emphasizes the role of significant food processing to make plants edible that otherwise are inedible or have reduced nutritional value prior to processing. There are very important crops worldwide that can be poisonous without processing. The most important, bitter cassava, is the classic example of a cultigen that requires significant processing to make it edible. Still, it has become a staple

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for millions. At least 137 genera and 216 species in 65 families have been recorded as being detoxified before eating (Johns and Kubo 1988). These are widely placed in the plant world and include lichens, fungi, and algae, as well as many vascular plants. Noteworthy for their importance among these are plants in the cycad family (Cycadaceae), arum family (Araceae), yam family (Dioscoreaceae), and bean family (Fabaceae), as well as oaks (Quercus spp.), that have been rendered edible by detoxification (Johns and Kubo 1988). These data illustrate that toxic elements themselves do not render plants completely outside the realm of human food. Therefore, ill-tasting or toxic famine foods may be amenable to greater use. Surely there is variation within populations of native famine food species with some subpopulations less toxic or ill-tasting than others that would therefore require less processing. Humans have previously exploited intraspecific differences, as is the case with cassava, which has both sweet and bitter varieties. Perhaps we need to look harder for wild plants with similar variations. Some famine foods may have particularly useful nutritional value. Parts of edible foods normally discarded prior to consumption in East Asia have nutritional value (as discussed in chapter 2), suggesting that famine foods also have more nutritional value than often assumed. Culled from his famine food database, Freedman proposes that some famine foods may be useful beyond their consumption during food shortages. He highlights six plants that he suggests deserve more study because of their nutritional value: macambria (Bromelia laciniosa, bromeliad family, bulbs eaten in Brazil), jack bean (Canavalia ensiformis, bean family, fruit pods eaten in India), shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris, mustard family, leaves and seeds eaten in China), artichoke thistle (Cynara cardunculus, sunflower family, leaf ribs and flower heads eaten in Tunisia), Brazil plum (Spondias tuberosa, cashew family, bulbs eaten in Brazil), and rough cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium, sunflower family, seeds eaten in China). He also suggests wild plants, including some used as famine foods, in home gardens could improve health and income of small-scale farmers and gardeners (Freedman 2015). In a similar vein, Wu (2003) suggests that local famine food plants, specifically kudzu and various ferns such as Osmunda spp., could become local commercial resources as well as maintain and reinforce local ethnic identity in one Chinese prefecture.

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Read also points out another issue, that better use of famine foods requires not just the enumeration of specific plants but also the best way to use them: “We need to show how these foods can be put together to make attractive meals, meals adequate in calorie intake for a subsistence diet and meals adequate in vitamins and salt to protect people from diseases of malnutrition resulting from an unbalanced diet” (1946:8). While Read may have been overly optimistic arguing that famine foods may provide adequate, attractive, and fully nutritious meals, researching how to better derive better nutritional value in culturally acceptable ways by combining famine foods might have surprisingly useful outcomes nonetheless. Of special note are farming byproducts and refuse. As we have seen in the descriptions of modern famines among rural agricultural communities and urban centers, these materials have become significant, if not dominant, local sources of famine foods despite their limited nutritional value. This is illustrated in Li’s (2007:360–361) summary of food use during the Great Leap Forward famine, during which agricultural byproducts were prominent foods: “People ate wild ‘vegetables,’ that is, grasses, weeds, and bark, as well as corncobs and chaff. Other food substitutes that were served in the dining halls included soybean flour, sweet potato stalks, cottonseed cakes, and starches made of leaves and grasses. Peasants would grind the dried food substitutes, such as tree bark or corn cobs, into a powder, and then cook them by boiling or steaming so they could be swallowed.” There has been much research on the use of discarded biomass for animal feed and biofuels. However, research on deriving products edible for humans from agricultural refuse, such as corncobs or cereal chaff, could be useful in offering alternative foods during food shortages, especially when relief supplies are unavailable or inadequate. Now these are usually used only to extend foods. Given the abundance of such potentially useful foods, this approach may be valuable for improving famine foods. Corncobs, as an example, contain ash (1%), lignin (14%), pentosan (42%), and cellulose (32%) (Clark and Lathrop 1953). Can as much nutritional value for humans as possible be extracted from maize cobs or other agricultural waste, which are abundant in many farming communities? There has been some limited modern research on this approach (e.g., You et al. 2013). Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (http://www.allfed.info) is an NGO working on strategies

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to feed humanity after the most cataclysmic food failures, including chemical processes to make inedible materials edible to humans (Denkenberger and Pearce 2015). This may not be as outlandish as it would first appear. Just remember that a major plant food in the circumpolar region is lichen rendered edible for humans only by chemical processes in the gut of reindeer and caribou. And there are some historical precedents of making inedible food edible such as in the Siege of Leningrad, Indian, and Chinese examples discussed in chapter 5. Basically, some food is better than no food under extreme circumstances. While some food is better than no food, alternative foods are most effective when they fit cultural patterns and expectations for food. Maize shipped to Ireland during the potato famine, artificial rice developed in newly independent India, or pork available among Muslim communities are historical examples of problems when foods are not part of cuisines or aligned with cultural sensibilities. The cross-cultural study of famines also can alert us to potential resources that we might not think of as edible or even useful. An excellent example from the area where I live and work, the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico, is goat’s head, or puncturevine (Tribulus terrestris). This prostrate weed produces sharp-spine fruits that lacerate bicycle tires, animal paws, and unshorn human feet. As Parker (1972:198) notes, “Homeowners and their dogs probably dislike puncturevine more than any other weed.” This plant has a long history as a medicine in India and China and has even become a health-food supplement in the West. However, it would be especially surprising to nearly all of us living in the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico that this plant is recorded as an important and widely used famine food, including in several regions of India (Bhandari 1974; Singhi and Joshi 2010), China (Read 1946), Darfur (de Waal 2005), and other parts West Africa (Irvine 1952). In fact, puncturevine was the “chief food of the people during the Madras Famine” (Bhandari 1974:75). The spiny nutlets can be ground to flour, and the whole plant can be cooked as greens. While the nutlets are “not very digestible,” the leaves are rich in calcium and iron with substantial vitamin C and are “higher in protein in comparison with most leafy green vegetables” (FAO 1988:491). Likewise, bhurat (Cenchrus biflorus), a grass closely related to sandbur, another noxious weed with spiny fruits in the U.S.

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Figure 19 Goat’s head, or puncturevine (photograph courtesy Susan Davis Carnahan).

Southwest and northwest Mexico, is one of the most nutritious famine foods in Rajasthan (Bhandari 1974; Singhi and Joshi 2010). People in eastern North America know nettles (Urtica dioica) as a plant to be avoided because of its stinging hairs that as Gerard’s Herbal noted in 1597, “causeth a great burning, and raiseth hard knots in the skin like blisters, sometimes making it red” (Woodward 1994:158). Yet it was a major alternative food during the famines in Greece, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Russia. No doubt even more surprising is the fact that the starchy roots of kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata), an ever-spreading invasive pest originally from Japan that swallows whole buildings, trees, and roadsides in the U.S. Southeast, is an important famine food in Papua New Guinea and also is a food used in southeast Asia. Ignorance of potentially edible foods is not limited to differences among regions. Expanding the roster of plants that can be eaten during food shortages is also useful within regions. The number of possible foods unknown to any local population may be substantial. For three groups in northern Kenya (Turkana and Samburu) and northern Senegal (Ferlo), Becker (1986:61) estimates that “in all the study areas, there is unutilized potential of plants which

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F i g u re 2 0 Kudzu (photograph courtesy of Bruce Alexander Sorrie).

are reported as edible from elsewhere. The per cent of these underexploited edible plants is greatest in Ferlo, comprising about 50 per cent of all species . . . with only 10 per cent in the Samburu area.” De Waal (2005:134–135) describes variation among Darfurian villages in the 1980s in what is known to be edible: “A Zaghawa visiting Dar Meidob in 1985 remarked on the number of edible wild grasses that the local Meidob were not making use of, not knowing they were edible or how to prepare them.” The discussion of famine food use among neighboring groups in southern African case studies discussed earlier highlights the variation in knowledge about and use of famine foods. This is one reason why Freedman’s database and other compendia of famine foods are so important, as they extend our knowledge of famine foods beyond specific cultures or communities. Finally, famine foods, in contrast with most relief supplies, are local resources. As such they help promote food sovereignty and agency for affected people. Many famine foods are normally collected locally based on local knowledge. This is especially true when national or international aid cannot reach those affected either because of conflict or some natural barrier. Food kitchens, rationing, and relief distribution, whether organized by

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governments or private entities, cannot always provide sufficient sustenance. As this is being written, the famine caused by a civil war in Yemen is exacting a terrible toll on the population because distribution of relief supplies has been hampered by the belligerents. Famine foods are likely to be most useful for groups and individuals with the least resources. Those with sufficient funds normally have greater access to markets even during food shortages when food prices can skyrocket, the ability to move, and goods that can be sold for food. The poor less so. One example is the low caste Dalits in a region of Andhra Pradesh, India, who are poor farmers for whom greens are a critical resource (Salomeyesudas and Satheesh 2009). The greens of at least 73 plant species, most of which are from uncultivated plants, are eaten on a regular basis and provide valuable vitamins and minerals. To the point of this volume, the authors note that the Dalit interviewees remembered how greens and flour made from alternative sources fed them for four months during a famine. The knowledge of famine food use, consequently, should benefit those with limited funds and options more than others.

What Needs to Be Done If famine foods have value, then there is a need to document their use. But they are hard to study. As suggested in chapter 1, knowledge of famine foods is likely to be lost more easily than that of more commonly used foods. I suspect that the less preferred a food and the less commonly it is used, the more easily lost will be knowledge of its edibility or how to render it edible. There is little reason to think that this trend will not accelerate. Studies of famines, especially in modern nations, often incidentally and anecdotally mention famine foods, as we have seen in the previous chapter. Rather, the emphasis, understandably, is on aid efforts. Such studies need to document famine foods including their scientific and local names as well as their ecological and cultural contexts. The irony is that reports of famine food use tend to be less detailed for urban populations, with terms like “grass” and “weeds,” than reports for lower density hunter-gatherer groups and village agriculturalists despite the fact that urbanism will continue to be the setting

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for most of humanity. There are models, such as the oral history studies of Dutch and Greek survivors of World War II famines and the Chinese who lived through the Great Leap Forward famine, that document how knowledge of the use of foods during food shortages can be obtained. The Dutch study discussed in chapter 5 offers perhaps the best model for recording famine food use through study of archival records as well as interviews with survivors combined with reasonable botanical identification of the famine foods. Even after many decades some information about foods consumed during shortages is retained, but serious questions remain about how much is remembered, and will the survivors’ grandchildren have access to information about famine foods and how to prepare them? If there is one concrete suggestion, it is to conduct more oral interviews with tribal peoples, village agriculturalists, and food shortage survivors as mentioned above. While interviews with those who actually lived through famines and other serious food shortages should provide the best information about famine food use, the Irish oral tradition project still yielded recollections passed down several generations. The best results will come when social scientists and botanists collaborate with local communities so an as accurate and full understanding of famine food use as possible is collected and preserved. Famine food studies need also to offer them in a historical frame since food use changes. We cannot fully understand what foods are eaten during shortages without understanding the biological and cultural contexts over time. Contributions from the humanities, especially prehistorians, historians, and folklorists, will be helpful in this regard. How many famine foods are yet to be discovered? Let’s play a numbers game—one that can be easily questioned yet is mathematically and culturally conservative—one that as an anthropologist I am almost embarrassed to suggest. The concept of “culture” has been very slippery and has deviled anthropologists for more than a century, so it is nearly impossible to define what a culture is let alone estimate how many cultures there are in the world. Instead, a proxy is the number of languages in the world, which has been estimated to be around 7,100 (http://www.ethnologue.com/guides /how-many-languages), and this does not include innumerable ancient languages that no longer exist. To be conservative, let us say that the number of languages is one-quarter of the 7,100, or 1,775, and that each language has

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knowledge of 10 unique famine foods. The total then would be around 17,750 famine foods. This exercise makes so many assumptions about the number of languages, shared cultural knowledge, and other variables that are not controlled for, that one would be justified in dismissing it outright. Coming from the number of plants rather than languages, we can suggest that a figure of 17,750 famine foods is likely a gross underestimate. Nearly 400,000 plant species have been recognized, and many more are as of yet undiscovered by botanists (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2016). A total of 17,750 potential famine foods would represent less than 5% of the known plant species. It would seem reasonable that the number of famine foods would be at least equal to the little over 28,000 plant species known to have been used medicinally (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2017). In a broader sense, these estimates by number of languages and number of plant species do point out that as impressive as Freedman’s database of 1,600 famine foods is, there is almost assuredly much work to do. In fact, the size of his database is close to the number of new plant species being discovered each year. For example, at least 1,730 new plant species were named in 2016 (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2017) and an additional 1,942 were added in 2019 (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2020). No doubt some of these new species could be eaten in times of food insecurity. Governments have been involved in famine relief for centuries. But with a few exceptions, particularly the Netherlands, China, and India, discussed in earlier chapters, they rarely deal with famine foods except as relief supplies and occasionally the development of a limited range of alternative foods. As unfortunate as this is, it is not surprising. As a matter of course, governments regulate and manipulate markets and infrastructure. Their responses to severe food shortages tend to be very bureaucratic, such as the famous Indian Famine Codes. Gathering famine foods tends to be more an individual or familial activity that is largely outside the focus of governments. Is information about famine foods for largely urban communities available or is it lost for good? While other approaches for recording food use during shortages besides dedicated studies of famine foods are less satisfactory, they may help maintain knowledge of these resources. To some extent, literature on native edible plants, while not directly presented as data about famine foods, does provide information about potential foods that otherwise

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would not be available to the general public. This information falls into three major types: those aimed at general audiences; sources that provide academic, region-wide summaries; and those books and articles by and for Indigenous groups. The first category is the most extensive. There is a long history in North America, as an example, of interest in native food gathering going back hundreds of years. A well-known, modern North American example of a widespread interest in foraging would be the near dozen books by Euell Gibbons (1962, for his first book) that popularized food gathering in nature. Such books commonly provide cooking instructions. Speaking to a different audience than Gibbons in North America are the dozens of current survivalist manuals (e.g., Canterbury 2014; Department of Defense 2019; MacWelch 2014), as well as a resurgent interest in local foraging (e.g., Slattery [2016] is one in a series of nine regional foraging books covering North America) that offer at least minimal information about native edible plants. North America is not alone in this resurgent interest in wild foods. A similar movement, for example, is present in Australia (e.g., Cherikoff 2015; Newton 2016) among other countries. Such information, however, does not often have the depth of knowledge that Indigenous groups have of their local environment and how to best use it. Regional compendia are a second category. Three examples include one for North America, Native American Ethnobotany (Moerman 1988); one for China, Food Plants of China (Hu 2006); and one for Mexico, Plantas útiles de la flora Mexicana (Martínez 1959). There are many more in other regions of the world, such as numerous efforts to compile Aboriginal knowledge in Australia (Nakata and Langton 2006). In a similar vein, two recent reissues of the Jiuhuang Bencao may indicate a renewed awareness of available famine foods in China (Yan 2016; Zhu 2008). The third category is composed of information intended for, and often by, Indigenous communities. These not only provide information but also are often presented to help maintain traditional knowledge and not infrequently are written in the Indigenous language. Two examples include Ralámuli nu’tugala go’ame / Comida de los Tarahumaras (Tarahumara foods; Mares Trías 1982), written in Tarahumara with Spanish translations for the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) of northern Mexico, a group that has maintained traditional ways but is facing strong and relentless outside cultural and economic pres-

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sures; and the second, Choctaw Foods: Remembering the Land, Rekindling Ancient Knowledge (Thompson 2019), is written for a Native American community that is integrated into the dominant national and state societies with many members trying to maintain or rekindle knowledge of traditional Choctaw language and lifeways. An ancillary way knowledge of possible famine foods is shared is the widespread interest in traditional medicinal plants. Knowledge of natural plant medicines, many of which are edible, has also been source of information about potential edible resources throughout the world (Etkin 2006; Huss-Ashmore and Johnston 1997; Zhou 2012). Governments and other organizations documenting and distributing information about potential foods not normally consumed are the first two steps toward greater use of potential famine foods. And we have seen numerous examples of this in China, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, and by Allied forces in the Pacific. The third step, and one that as far as I know has never been done, is to systematically evaluate how effective these programs were. There is anecdotal evidence from oral histories that dissemination of information about famine foods was useful, but there is no reliable data on the efficacy of such programs. Understanding the value and ubiquity of famine foods is yet another example of the importance of studying the total range of relationships between human behaviors and botanical ecologies. We need not only be concerned with the most important food sources and the most aesthetically interesting plants but also with plants otherwise neglected, underappreciated, or even unloved. Even invasive plants that are normally viewed with disdain for good reasons can have value as famine foods, kudzu being just one example. Some of us may still despise puncturevine, sandbur, nettle, and kudzu among other plants, but we need to understand that they have saved lives in the past and may do so in the future.

Final, Final Thoughts It would be easy to overinterpret this volume and think that it is arguing that local famine foods are a panacea for provisioning communities facing severe

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food shortages. This is usually not the case, especially for urbanized nations. The amounts of food needed during a severe famine can be staggering. An estimated 651,000 tons of rice were needed monthly during the Bengal famine in 1943 to feed the 60 million people in the region (Weigold 1999). By the end of 1943, Bengal had received nearly three million tons of rice and slightly over three million tons of wheat as relief (Bhatia 1967). Yet millions still died. Approximately 565,000 tons of grain were delivered to the U.S. and British sectors in Germany after World War II, and more was needed (Wheatcroft and Ó Gráda 2017). Could wild greens, alternative crop usage, and other local famine foods compensate for the amount of food needed to make up for deficiencies? Simply, the answer is highly unlikely. With higher population densities, greater urbanism, economic inequality, and unavoidable market economies, relief foods will be the primary aid to alleviate regional starvation. From the broadest historical perspective, humanity has been increasingly reliant on agriculture for 10 millennia, and there is no reason to think this will decrease through time. Systematic institutional changes to the production, distribution, and consumption of foodstuffs and wealth inequality along with effective aid efforts are the keys to sustainable and equable food use. Still, famine foods have their place in meeting these goals; they may be able to help keep people alive when more common relief efforts fail, are insufficient, late in arriving, or are unavailable. Not only can famine foods offer a feeling of satiety and some calories, but some famine foods, such as leafy greens, have nutrients that may not be present in sufficient quantities in relief supplies. The cost of obtaining information about famine foods is quite small. In fact, it is inexpensive, but it does require collaboration between biologists, social scientists, and local communities. De Waal considers the recent history of famines and the future: The decline of famines is strongly associated with the rise of democratic freedoms and a beneficent multilateral world order. Over the last 30 years, we have assumed benevolent governance—that the default setting option in the international order—is to promote humane values and act against needless human suffering. That era may now be passing, and the default setting for global politics may return to the older premise that faraway human suffering, including mass starvation, can be tolerated or ignored [2018:200].

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We can all hope that a return to a world order of indifference to famines— and other life- and health-threatening food shortages—does not come to pass. But one does not have to envision the most pessimistic, most dystopian future to appreciate how knowledge of seemingly obscure foodstuffs, including plants we often prefer not to eat and the human resourcefulness in knowing how to make them edible, is both prudent and farsighted and may well lead to unexpected and useful outcomes.

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Index

Aboriginal Australians, 58, 65, 71–72; famine foods, 73–75, 76–77, 108 acorns, 45 Africa, 9, 12, 61. See also Ethiopia; Gwembe Tonga; Nigeria; San; Tyva; Zimbabwe agave, 96, 164 agriculture: decreasing diversity of crops used in, 162; refuse and byproducts as famine foods, 45–46, 59, 88, 98, 167–68. See also farming Alcorn, Janis B., 62–63 Almedom, Astier M., 17, 46–47 An Gorta Mór. See Irish Potato Famine Apache, 60 Asia: caloric value of plant parts in East, 58, 59; famine foods in, 61; famines in, 9, 125; number of famine food plants in, 61. See also China; India; Japan; Russia Aztec, 10 bean family 50, 159 beans, 45, 135, 159 Becker, Jasper, 25

Bengal famine of 1943, 13, 33, 47, 124–25, 176 berries, 78–79, 82, 117, 144 Bhatia, B. M., 124, 125 Bhattarai, Shalesh et al., 19 Bihar famine of 1966–67, 123 Bourke, Richard Michael, 18, 101–2 Brazil, 49 Bunzel, Ruth L., 22 Camporesi, Pietro, vii Cane, Scott, 74, 75 cannibalism, 35 China: famine foods in, 17, 45, 48, 53, 108, 128, 131, 134; famine relief herbals from, 24, 127, 128–32; famines in, 3, 7, 9, 126–27; government intervention in famines, 128; government storage to meet food shortages in, 28; scholarly interest in famine foods in, 23– 24, 61–62; useful plants mentioned in songs and rituals in, 21, 22. See also Daishipin Movement; Great Leap Forward famine; Jiuhuang Bencao, Tao religion; Zhu Xiao

208 | Index

circumpolar groups, 77–80, 83 Clarke, Philip A., vii Colson, Elizabeth, 26 Columbian exchange, xviii, 164 common barberry, 82 Cranwell, Lucy M. et al., 151 Cushing, Frank, 20 Daishipin Movement, 133, 137 Dalits, 171 Dando, William A., 7 Devereux, Stephen et al., 6 De Waal, Alex, 170, 176 Dolot, Miron, vii Dutch Hunger Winter, 138–39, 140–43 Eidlitz, Kerstin, 41, 83 Enga, 27, 102–4 environmental changes: effect of deforestation on wild plant foods, 13–14; strategies to improve food security in, 161–62 Ethiopia, 47, 53, 106, 107 Europe: famine foods in, 51, 60, 61; famines in, 7, 9, 138. See also Circumpolar Groups; Dutch Hunger Winter; Greece; Irish Potato Famine; Norway; Russia; Soviet Union famine foods: agricultural crops as, 105, 114, 136, 161; agricultural refuse and byproducts as, 45–46, 59, 88, 98, 167–68; alternate names for, 4; animal feed as, 45; caloric value of plant parts, 58–60; characteristics and types of, 40–48, 63–64; definition of, 156–57; differences between plant and animal, 5; differential knowledge of in communities, 23, 168–70; documentation of is not a clear priority, 154–55; effect of Columbian exchange on, 164; effect of farming on, 87, 160; effect of urbanization

on, 19, 160; ersatz foods as, 44, 106, 144; estimate of how many are yet to be discovered, 172–73; food preference ranking as a way to understand, 83, 157–58; geographic distribution of, 60–62; government misinformation on, 25; are hard to study, 171–72; history of interest in, 4–5; knowledge of is decreasing dramatically, 162–63; knowledge of transferred by oral tradition, 20–21; as local resources that help promote food sovereignty, 170–71; as low status foods, 18; are most effective when they fit cultural patterns and expectations, 168; are most useful to those with the least resources, 171; native plants as, 46–47, 48, 173–75; necessary role of governments and private organizations in disseminating information on, 163; need for documentation of, 171–72; not a clear boundary between wild foods or traditional vegetables and, 46–47; nutritional value of, 56; origin from normal foods of, xvi; plant families of, 49–52; plant parts used as, 52–56, 63, 159; regional variation in use of, 69, 90, 98, 158, 170; seed stock as, 45; tabooed foods as, 47–48; Traditional Ecological Knowledge of, 16–25, 126, 174--75; types of, 42–43; underreporting of, 110; use of normal crops in novel ways, 44; use of unknown and mimic plants as, 48. See also relief supplies; under individual cultures famine mitigation responses: changes in consumption of common foods, 30– 31; consumption of nonplant “food,” 34; demographic changes, 33; migration, 31–33; ritual, 31; selling goods, oneself, or debt, 33–34; theft, 34

Index | 209

famines: anticipatory actions, 27–30; caused by wars, 138; as common events, 10; deaths in, 7–8, 125, 138, 144; ecological change caused by, 13; emic definitions of, 15–16; food poisoning in, 48–49; lists by region of, 9–10; media exposure of modern, 113; names for, 14–15; nonfood plants used in, 62–63; not evenly distributed geographically or historically in Eastern Hemisphere, 11–12; rarity in Western Hemisphere of, 10–11; regional distribution of, 9–11; types of, 7. See also food shortages farming: creation of new famine foods by, 88, 167; effects upon use of traditional famine foods of, 72, 87, 160; “fire-stick,” 65. See also agriculture Field, Christopher B. et al., 161 food preferences: famine foods and, 83, 157; reorientation of in colonial SW/ NW, 97, 164 food processing, 165–66 food security, 161–62 food shortages: alternates to famine food use during, 26–35; anticipatory actions for, 27–30; emic views of, 14–16; intermediate, 8; moral and religious views of, 15; are more than starvation, 12–14; social banking as response to, 29–30; types of, 5; ubiquity of, 3. See also famines food storage, 28–29, 87–88, 128 Frank, Richard B., 46 Freedman, Robert L., 53, 166 Galen of Pergamon, 4, 45 geophagia, 5, 34–35 Great Leap Forward famine: agricultural products as most important famine foods in, 136, 167; deaths in, 7; famine foods used in, 46, 134–35; food poisoning in, 49; governmental

involvement in origin and mitigation of, 128, 133; interviews with survivors of, 134–35; non-biotic materials eaten in, 34–35; rural villagers starved so urban dwellers could live, 38 Greece, 18, 144–46 green algae, 45 gums and resins, 68, 73, 77 Gwembe Tonga, 17, 33, 49, 70, 98–101, 108 Hasell, Joe, 7, 9 Hausa, 26, 37, 46, 47, 53 Hely-Hutchinson, Walter, 98 Hionidou, Violetta, 18, 145 Holodomor. See Soviet Union Hopi, 87, 92, 94, 95, 96, 108 Huastec, 62–63 hunger: perceptions of are varied, 15–16; seasons, 6, 31, 74; suppressants, 43, 62–63, 75, 81 hunter-gatherers. See nonagricultural societies (hunter-gatherers) Inber, Vera, 148, 149 India: begging as critical famine strategy in, 125; British colonial famine policies, 90, 119–20; famine foods of, 53, 57, 61, 108, 120–23, 171; famine in Rajasthan in, 122–23; famines related to commercialization of the economy, 12; forbidden foods and famines in, 18, 47; frequency of famines in, 9, 118; oral tradition of famines in, 20; precolonial famine mitigation by rulers of, 119; scholarly interest in famines in, 61; wealth of traditional knowledge about famine foods not used by relief workers in, 126. See also Bengal famine of 1943; Dalit Indian Famine Codes, 61, 119 inner bark, 59–60, 82, 153 Inuit, 77–80

210 | Index

Irish Potato Famine, 12; agricultural commodities as major foods in, 44, 114–16; famine foods in, 116–18; maize as relief food in, xviii, 44, 115–16; migration caused by, 32, 112, 163–64 Irvine, F. R., 73–74, 77 Japan, 46 Jiuhuang Bencao (Famine relief herbal), 24, 53, 127, 128–31, 137, 163 Johns, Timothy, 165 Jupp, James, 72 Kahn, Miriam, 17 Kenya, 14, 19 Kochina, Elena, 148 kudzu, 169, 170 Latz, Peter, 75–76, 77 leaves and greens, 100; as famine food, 52, 53, 54, 55, 88, 97–98, 104, 107, 122, 134, 135, 140, 143, 144, 153; nutritional value of, 57, 58, 59 Lee, Joseph, 3 Lee, Richard B., 67, 68 Lee, Suk, 165 Leonti, M. et al., 62 Li, Lillian M., 3, 167 lichen, 168 lotus root, 130 Maiden, J. H., 71–72 maize, 28, 87, 97, 145; cobs, 86, 165; as relief food in Irish Potato famine, xviii, 44, 115–16 Malawi, 56 Mao Zedong, 38 medicinal plants, 23, 62, 175 Merrill, Elmer D., 151, 152 Mexico, 111. See also Aztec; Huastec; Mountain Pima milo, 44 Mimbres, xv–xvi

Moerman, Daniel E., 54–55 Mountain Pima, 95, 96 Muller, Jocelyn, 17, 46–47 Natsios, Andrew S., 24–25 Netherlands. See Dutch Hunger Winter nettles, 18, 65, 169 Nicol, B. M., 7 Nigeria, 53, 87, 108. See also Hausa nonagricultural societies (huntergatherers): famine foods summary for, 83–85; flexibility in food use of, 84; food mix variation of, 66–67; resource manipulation by, 65–66. See also Aboriginal Australians; Circumpolar groups; San North America: famine foods in, 11, 54–55, 61; modern interest in native foods in, 174–75; oral traditions about famines in, 20. See also Hopi; Inuit; Northwestern North America (NWNA); O’Odham; U. S. Southwest and Northern Mexico North Korea, 24–25, 49, 165 Northwestern North America (NWNA), 67, 80–81; famine foods in, 42–43, 55–56, 81–83, 84, 108 Norway, 144 Oceania, 61 Ó Gráda, Cormac, 9 O’Odham, 32 pandanus nuts, 103 Papua New Guinea, 103–5, 108, 160. See also Enga Parsons, Elsie Clews, 29 Póirtéir, Cathal, 116, 117 ponderosa pine, 60 potatoes, 114, 147. See also Irish Potato famine prickly pear cactus, 164 puncturevine, 168, 169

Index | 211

Read, Bernard E., 53,128; 167 relief supplies, 90, 119; alter traditional responses to food shortage, 17, 42; failure of means local famine foods still important, 176; lack of knowledge of receivers in preparing, 44, 115; resistance of British to using, 34, 43; urban areas favored with, 111, 126, 145 Roser, Max, 7, 9 Russia, 111. See also Soviet Union sago, 42 San, 29, 71, 76–77, 101, 106: comparison of “normal” and supplementary foods of, 69–70; famine food comparison with Aboriginal Australians, 76–77; famine food comparison with Gwembe Tonga, 101; famine foods, 108; as iconic example of foragers, 67; lose body weight during hunger seasons, 31; major food categories of, 67–68; number of famine foods of, 70, 107–8; variation in food between subcommunities of, 68–69 Scott, J. E., 3 Scudder, Thayer, 100; Hypothesis of, 89, 105, 160 Singh, K. Suresh, 125–26 social banking, 29–30 Sōukland, Renata, 19 South America, 61 Soviet Union: Kazakh famines, 28–29, 112–13; Siege of Leningrad, 146, 147– 50; Ukrainian famine, vii, 40 Srivastava, Hari Shanker, 118–19 Sudan, 14 sweet potatoes, 15, 38, 101, 102, 103, 128 Tao religion, 22 Traditional Ecological Knowledge. See under famine foods tree bark, 135

Turner, Nancy J., 20, 42–43, 55–56, 81–83 Tyva, 71 urbanized nations, 110–11; cultivated plants play a disproportionate role during shortages, 161; lack strong social bonds for sustaining groups during famines, 112; loss of knowledge of famine foods in, 19; ruralurban difference in effects of food shortage, 38, 125; use of food as policy tool by, 112. See also China; India U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico (SW/NW), 91–92; documented famine foods were common foods for prehistoric ancestors of, 97; famine foods in, 55, 92, 93–94, 108; lack of mention of agricultural refuse as famine food in, 98; reorganization of food preference patterns as a result of Spanish colonization of, 97. See also Apache; Hopi; Mountain Pima; O’Odham Verghese, B. C., 156 villages and rural farming communities, 86; famine food use by, 105; importance of storage in, 87–88; may have had wider range of backup foods than hunter-gatherers, 106, 107–9; social organization and adaptation to famine by, 89–90; use of famine foods from crops by, 88–89. See Enga; Gwembe Tonga; Hopi; U. S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico (SW/NW) Vorstenbosch, Tom et al., 140–43 Waddell, Eric, 103 Watt, George, 120–22, 123 Will, Pierre-Etienne, 137 Wola, 31

212 | Index

World War II: Pacific Theater, 40, 150– 53; starvation during, 137. See also Dutch Hunger Winter; Greece; under Soviet Union Yu Ruwei, 132

Zhou, Xun, 24, 48, 134–35, 136 Zimbabwe, 13–14, 90 Zhu Xiao (Zhu Su), 23. See also Jiuhuang bencao Zuni, 20, 22

About the Author

Paul E. Minnis (PhD, University of Michigan) is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma now living in Tucson, Arizona, where he is a visiting scholar at the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He conducts research on the prehispanic ethnobotany and archaeology of northwest Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Although he has worked throughout the region and his first intensive archaeological research in the area was on the ancient Mimbres tradition centered on southwestern New Mexico, his primary field research has focused since 1984 on Paquimé and its regional setting in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, and he codirected research projects in the area beginning in 1989. In addition, he has published extensively on ethnobotany. He is the author or editor of 14 books and numerous articles. He was the president of the Society of Ethnobiology, treasurer and Press editor for the Society for American Archaeology, and co-founder of the Southwest Symposium. He has received the E. K. Janaki Amal Medal and the Byron Cummings Award and was a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer.